alt Hacker News> ICANN isn't the DNS police
ICANN and IANA very much are the DNS police. As a matter of fact, IANA maintains a list of special-use domains - though, despite its widespread use, .lan is not on the list - and these domains will get rejected from gTLD applications outright. The last thing I want is to require each recursive resolver to have their own idea of what should and shouldn't be resolved.
On a related note, Google owns a registry (CRR) and a recursive resolver (8.8.8.8) that's commonly used by default or as fallback. Letting them ban entire TLDs would be a massive conflict of interest.
ICANN only have enforcement power over registries and registrars. They have no enforcement power over hardware vendors, software vendors or public resolvers.
What I implied (but failed to emphasise) is that what I'm calling for is already in de-facto effect, with multiple software and hardware vendors treating .lan as not publicly resolvable. What you describe as "the last thing [you] want" is already happening; my proposal is for more of the same.
It is valid to note that ICANN could abuse their contractual arrangements with resolvers who also operate registrars, but this would be an illegal intimidation tactic. It would not be a conflict of interest for Google to act if part of a wider campaign involving other parties.