Recent Posts
- PIR’s “new” .org domain is just temporary. Help it pick another new one!
- MMX switches porn TLDs from Afilias to Uniregistry
- Argentina will use a lottery to decide 2LD landrush
- Sixty gTLD registries not monitoring security threats
- ICANN must do more to fight internet security threats [Guest Post]
- Bumper batch of dot-brands off themselves for Friday 13th
- .org price cap complaints more like “spam” says Ombudsman
- Botterman is new ICANN chair
- Another victory for Amazon as ICANN rejects Colombian appeal
- Kafka turns in grave as ICANN crowbars “useless” Greek TLD into the root
- Sorry, you still can’t sue ICANN, two-faced .africa bidder told
- Why you should never let a pizza joint apply for your billion-dollar dot-brand
- More than 1,000 new gTLDs a year? Sure!
- Paranoid ICANN opens another root server in China
- A third of the top TLDs are shrinking
- These two ccTLDs drove two thirds of all domain growth in Q2
- .blog registry handover did NOT go smoothly
- Donuts slashes prices on a million domains
- .tech gTLD startups “raise $2 billion”
- Whois killer deadline has passed. Did most registrars miss it?
- CIRA replaces CORE as emergency backup registry
- The Amazon is burning. Is this good news for .amazon?
- China’s MySpace trainwreck sells its gTLD
- Second-level .au names delayed
- ICANN names new directors, replaces Facebook exec
- After getting acquired, bank scraps its dot-brand
- Porn-block retail prices revealed. Wow.
- Registrars could be held liable for US gun violence
- Three-letter .com owned by hospital “hijacked”
- “We’re Irish!” claim Brits as .eu shrinks yet again
- Mystery .vu registry revealed
- Berkens says new gTLDs mostly suck but geos suck hardest
- .gay gets rooted
- Neustar takes control of two new gTLDs
- Epik will sponsor 8chan’s domain, but will not host its site
- EFF becomes second to appeal new .org contract
- CentralNic to pay $3.4 million for iwantmyname
- Google has big, innovative plans for .new
- Amazon and Google have been BEATEN by a non-profit in the fight for .kids
- After more racist shootings, take one guess which registrar 8chan just switched to
- Radix releases huge amount of premium domain data
- ICANN dumps the “Whois” in new Whois tool
- Now auDA loses its CEO too
- Porn blocks could be worth millions to MMX
- Cryptocurrency firms to be banned from .bank
- Cybersquatting cases down a bit in the UK
- Looks like .fans has a new Chinese owner
- Can NameCheap reverse .org price cap scrap?
- Neustar to keep .us for another decade
- MMX to pay $5.1 million to get out of terrible .london deal
.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!