It's not quite at News Of The World level, but expect the word "scandal" to be bandied around the ICANN community in the next few days. The news that ex Chairman of the ICANN Board Peter Dengate Thrush (PDT) has joined a new gTLD consultancy firm will no doubt cause a few teeth to grind.

In fact, just hours after it was made public, I was seeing tweets like this "Peter Dengate Thrush votes for new TLDs at #ICANN, then joins a company which sells them..." or this "A clear case of conflict of interest, it does not help #ICANN nor new TLDs."

The bitterness is understandable. PDT was in charge of the industry's regulatory body for most of the implementation phase of the new gTLD program. His drive to get it approved before his term as Chair ended (in Singapore on June 24, just 4 days after the Board approved the new gTLD program) was relentless. Getting there meant upsetting a few people who felt PDT's intransigence left no room for any views but his own.

No doubt those people will now join in a chorus of criticism and smug "oh now we understand why he was in such a hurry to get new gTLDs done!" comments.