Summary of Answer to Question 18
GE GTLD Holdings LLC (“GEGTLD”), a wholly-owned subsidiary of General Electric Company (“General Electric” or “GE”), is applying for .GECOMPANY (and .通用电气公司 in a separate application) both as a defensive measure to protect and strengthen the GE trademarks and brands, and also to coalesce GE’s current domain names and allow GE’s customers and partners to have a recognized top level domain, housing the most up-to-date and complete information about General Electric as a company as well as GE’s goods and services. .GECOMPANY (with .通用电气公司) will examine the market once delegation and launch of .GECOMPANY occurs, and examine whether .GECOMPANY can act as a cornerstone of GEGTLD’s and General Electric’s future online strategic initiative, by providing a trusted and intuitive namespace for consumers of General Electric’s goods and services and a source of information for others, including employees, jobseekers and investors. The .GECOMPANY gTLD will be a specialized gTLD with no public registration market and no revenue streams.
General Electric is one of the top companies in the entire world, with hundreds of businesses and thousands of brands, including the core brand of General Electric itself. The value of the GE brands is incalculable, but in sum total would certainly be worth billions of dollars. The preservation and enhancement of this brand is of the utmost importance to General Electric in all aspects of its operations, including and especially on the Internet. In the new Internet environment, it is important that the users and consumers of GE’s goods and services and GE’s many partners, suppliers, and retailers know exactly where to go for all information regarding General Electric and its many related entities.
The creation of the .GECOMPANY gTLD will better enable General Electric to protect its core brands and the corporate General Electric brand. It will also benefit the general public by assuring Internet users that they will be getting the most up-to-date and accurate information about GE’s products and services, the best customer service experience possible, and a place free from worries of pirates, cybersquatters, typosquatters, and similar wrongdoers. It will also allow the creation of short, memorable domain name addresses to make it easier for the public to find exactly what they are looking for concerning General Electric.
Finally, General Electric will use .GECOMPANY so as to focus its online marketing to the new .GECOMPANY and .通用电气公司 gTLDs so that there will be a consistent message to the public regarding General Electric products and services as well as information about the company itself. GE will examine the marketplace to see if it can use the efficiencies created by this new system and put saved resources into other initiatives to benefit both General Electric and the public at large.
GEGTLD will be allowing registration at the second level on a closed-platform, limited domain name, basis and only for GE divisions and affiliates and possibly for GE partners and suppliers as time goes on.
The online presence of General Electric serves several functions. It informs the public about GE. It provides information about GE’s products and services, and about its partners and affiliates. It provides relevant information to investors and others interested in the financial profile of the company and to job seekers who are interested in career information. It also provides access to certain sites that are only available to the GE community, such as human resources and other corporate policies.
GEGTLD is seeking to apply for .GECOMPANY as a defensive measure to insure the safety of GE’s trademarks and also as a way to coalesce GE’s current domain names and increase the strength of the GE brands. This new gTLD will provide a trusted and intuitive namespace for consumers of General Electric’s goods and services, and will have internal and informational uses such as for human resources and corporate⁄investor information. .GECOMPANY will be a specialized gTLD with no public registration market and no revenue streams. It will be 100% owned by GEGTLD, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of General Electric. The preservation and protection of the GE brands is of paramount importance to General Electric in all aspects of its operations, including and especially on the Internet. Operating the GE brand as a gTLD will be an important part of GE’s digital strategy in the future.
The entire set of General Electric’s brands, especially the corporate General Electric⁄GE name, is a core asset of GE and the promotion and development of that asset is critical to General Electric’s long-term business and strategic interests. The business strategy for the .GECOMPANY gTLD is centered on the unification of intellectual property rights, promotion, marketing and customer relations across General Electric and all of its brands.
18(a) What is the Mission and Purpose of .GECOMPANY?
GE is a diversified infrastructure, finance and media company taking on the worldʹs toughest challenges. From aircraft engines and power generation to financial services, medical imaging, and television programming, GE operates in more than 100 countries and employs about 300,000 people worldwide.
GE has a strong set of global businesses in infrastructure, finance and media aligned to meet todayʹs needs, including the demand for global infrastructure; growing and changing demographics that need access to healthcare, finance, and information and entertainment; and, environmental technologies.
GE traces its beginnings to Thomas A. Edison, who established Edison Electric Light Company in 1878. In 1892, a merger of Edison General Electric Company and Thomson-Houston Electric Company created General Electric Company. GE is the only company listed in the Dow Jones Industrial Index today that was also included in the original index in 1896.
The mission and purpose of the .GECOMPANY gTLD is to act defensively to protect the GE brands and also to strengthen those brands as a trusted and intuitive namespace provided by General Electric, for General Electric customers, partners, affiliates, employees and others seeking information about General Electric, its companies, and its goods and services.
General Electric and GEGTLD will use the .GECOMPANY gTLD in an effort to help GE provide the best possible customer service and the most accurate and up-to-date information about GE’s goods and services, as well as the many entities affiliated with General Electric. Domain names may be specialized and formatted in an innovative fashion to enhance the General Electric name and all of GE’s brands. .GECOMPANY will help increase consumer association with the GE brands, and hopefully, give GE the opportunity to retain more control over its reputation and brands and market those brands accordingly. In theory, the .GECOMPANY gTLD will function as one giant house in which to explore all of GE’s brands, products and services, and consumers will be able to trust that they are getting the best and most recent information from the official General Electric entity associated with each second-level domain name within the .GECOMPANY closed gTLD.
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