Recent Posts
- .com zone tops 140 million
- .gay picks the absolutely perfect launch date
- Dot-brand .bond has been acquired and will relaunch as a generic this July
- CentralNic grabs more of the reseller market with $16.5 million acquisition
- EURid inks trademark protection deal for non-trademark owners
- CENTR: domain growth now slowest EVER
- Court rules domain name list should stay secret
- ICANN redacts the secrets of Verisign’s .web deal
- Got a spare three grand? For a limited period, you can buy a .th domain name
- Amazon wins! ICANN on verge of approving .amazon despite government outrage
- WordPress-linked .blog dumps Nominet for CentralNic
- Brand-blocking service plotted for porn gTLDs
- Five more gTLD deadbeats fingered by ICANN
- Defunct Famous Four ordered to hand $1.5 million back to investors
- Future of .io domains has become party-political issue in the UK
- ICANN to host first-ever high-stakes dot-brand auction
- Dead dot-brands hit 50
- Turkish government takes over ccTLD
- Pricey .inc does quite well in sunrise
- ICANN plans return to Cancun in 2021
- These five TLDs contain 80% of all child abuse images
- PIR says it has no plans to raise .org prices
- .CLUB to let brands block “trillions” of domains for $2,000
- Another five Amazon TLDs move to Nominet
- Non-coms say .org price cap should be RAISED
- Dot-brand early adopter becomes 48th to disappear
- Donuts acquires its 242nd gTLD
- Non-profits worth $2.6 billion a year say .org price caps should stay
- Governments demand Whois reopened within a year
- These people support scrapping .org price caps
- .org price anger comments top 3,000 as non-profits weigh in
- ICA rallies the troops to defeat .org price hikes. It won’t work
- Karklins beats LaHatte to chair ICANN’s Whois privacy team
- ICANN to approve new UDRP provider
- Amazon tells power-hungry governments to get stuffed
- Oh, the irony! Banned anti-Islam activist shows up on “Turkish” new gTLD domain
- ICANN got hacked by crypto bots
- Revenue dips as Brexit whacks .eu in 2018
- auDA rejects domaining ban but approves second-level domains
- KPMG dumps .com for dot-brand gTLD
- David and Goliath? DotMusic confirms .music win
- Neustar loses most of its Amazon back-end biz to Nominet
- ICANN takes the reins again as .amazon talks fail
- Italian bank is the latest dot-brand to bow out
- .music update: I’m calling it for Costa
- ICA opposes Aussie domaining ban
- “Just give up!” ICANN tells its most stubborn new gTLD applicant
- Did Roussos pull off the impossible? Google, Donuts, Radix all drop out of .music race
- “Stringent” new online censorship law could affect domain companies
- Looks like .music is finally on its way
.baby and .mls fetch over $3 million each
ICANN and Power Auctions have completed December’s mini-batch of “last resort” new gTLD auctions, adding a total of $6.4 million to its mysterious auction cash pile.
Johnson & Johnson won .baby, fighting off five portfolio applicants and paying a winning bid of $3,088,888.
Meanwhile, the Canadian Real Estate Association beat Afilias to .mls, paying $3,359,000.
I called it for CREA earlier this week, noting that the organization wanted .mls enough that it filed two applications, a failed Community Priority Evaluation, and an unsuccessful Legal Rights Objection against Afilias.
ICANN has now raised over $34 million selling off 10 strings at last resort auctions, with prices ranging from $600,000 (.信息) to $6.7 million (.tech).
The money has been set aside for purposes currently undecided. At least one applicant wants ICANN to redistribute the cash to losing bidders, which I don’t think is particularly likely.
Since MLS also stands for major league soccer, will this extension also be limited to members of the real estate community like .realtor, or will it be open others?
ICANN should allocated the majority of the money to support all of the new domain extensions coming to market via an international awareness campaign.
To simply take high application fees and annual fees, institute overbearing regulations, and cause costly delays would be a disservice to the whole program.
If ICANN truly wants to support innovation and competition in the name space they need to let the world know that the new domain extensions exist. Ironically, if they invested the funds to support the new TLDs it would actually support their longterm revenue streams.
Could only agree with you about this. ICANN’s actions seems very defensive, I wonder why.
It was not just CREA behind .mls:
http://realtormag.realtor.org/daily-news/2014/12/19/mls-domain-expand-internet-real-estate
https://twitter.com/dotmls/status/546027510627336192
“.MLS domains will NOT be available for real estate use within the U.S. under deal among @dotMLS, NAR, and CREA”
So, thru 3 different applicants, NAR secured .realestate, .mls and .realtor, and decided which TLD serves which market.
And here I just made a year-end tax-deductible donation to the campaign to fight MLS.
Doh!