I don't doubt google would attempt to do this, and probably win simply by being able to out resource an individual who registered the domain, however, my limited understanding of trademark law is this wouldn't necessarily be a valid claim.

My understanding is trademarks are a protection against consumer confusion, so as long as companies aren't selling similar products or services, or competing in the same geography there isn't a problem. This is difficult with google, but a non-tech scuba company operating under google.scuba or googlescuba.com wouldn't necessarily infringe on google the tech company unless they're actively doing something to make consumer believe they're dealing with google the tech company.

Google is difficult with it's large breadth of interests, but for most tech companies this is likely more about exploiting flaws with the legal system by out resourcing opponents more than legitimate claims (thinking the oracles, salesforces, dells, Intels, etc).

While this is generally true, it doesn’t apply to a famous and unique mark which would definitely be covered by trademark dilution in this case.

See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_dilution

IANAL but I'm pretty sure those examples could still be trademark infringement. Since Google is a global company and brand, someone could easily assume since your site is called google.scuba or googlescuba.com, you are in some way affiliated with or endorsed by Google. Perhaps you'd be OK if you made it very clear that wasn't the case, but I wouldn't want to bet on it.

I don't know what legal relationship it has to US trademark law, if any, but I've heard ICANN has its own sort of arbitration process for domain squatting disputes.

> apex domains of a TLD

aka domain names.

Although apple.records would not be available to Apple Computer. Trademark classes will make this all more interesting.

In fact, they're the only good argument in favour of expanded TLDs that I can think of.