Disney isn’t going to Sao Tome

Disney Enterprises, based in Burbank, California aren’t planning anything at all to do with Sao Tome & Principe, at least not in a foreseable future!

How do I come to this conclusion / prediction?

Simple. Nobody has registered disney.st which happens to be Sao Tome & Principe’s official domain suffix.

With hundreds of country level domains out there, is this kind of “random check” a valuable indicator of things to come, for Disney (or any other corporation out there)?

Probably not but still, here’s some more info on the matter.

Disney Online International provides a bird’s eye view of the vast array of country level domains which are currently being used. America, Asia-Pacific and Europe are abundantly represented. Some of the national destinations, like disney.ch look like they’re not ready yet because they head back to the “international page”. Obviously, these markets are the most important for Disney.

A worldwide domain name check on “disney.**” shows that it’s registered almost everywhere. It’s hard to say for sure if the Disney people are the ones owning those domains but I assume they have the lion’s share.

So this brings us back to Sao Tome & Principe. Why have they been left out?

The CIA Factbook provides interesting insight on the country (smallish, generally poor, isolated) but basically, the name, in itself, could be relevant because “Main Street” is the name for Disney’s Parks “central gathering locations / arteries” so it would make sense to get “disney.st”, don’t you think?

Will this humble post prompt some C-Level Executive at Disney to “address” this situation ASAP?

I doubt it, very much.

A serious company like Disney probably counts on the finest lawyers in the world to protect their brand so having this tiny island domain left out probably means Sao Tome & Principe is so small, Disney (yes, the billionaire empire) couldn’t even figure out a way to cover the costs of keeping a credible “web presence” for this island, located along Africa’s West Coast.

So the domain is available… for anyone to register. Would a huge icon like Disney risk this kind of thing? Well, it looks like they’ve already sided on this issue!

The whole thing still feels weird. What’s your take on this?