Recent Posts
- XYZ weighs into Epik controversy with .monster fundraising domain
- After NZ shooting, Epik has a Monster PR problem
- Another dot-brand bites the dust
- Whois vacuum AppDetex raises $10 million
- The DNS’s former overseer now has its own domain name
- Tucows splurges $30 million on Ascio
- UDRP complaints hit new high at WIPO
- .vu to relaunch under mystery new registry
- AlpNames could get PAID for abandoning its customers
- O.com might be a one-off for Verisign
- Andruff escalates Disspain feud, asks ICANN to ban him from chair
- Rumors swirl as AlpNames suffers “days” of downtime
- ICANN plays tough over Amazon dot-brands
- Data beats Merdinger to head universal acceptance group
- Radix sees revenue up 30%
- Verisign gets approval to sell O.com for $7.85
- At eleventh hour, most .uk registrants still don’t own their .uk names
- Mohan takes the reins at Afilias
- Trademark posse fails to block Whois privacy policy
- Nevett headhunts top execs from three rivals
- Internet to lose its .co.ck? Cook Islands mulls name change
- Donuts founder replaces Pitts as MMX’s premium guru
- Phishing still on the decline, despite Whois privacy
- Registrars given six months to deploy Whois killer
- Neustar completes .in migration
- Scottish registry dumps the pound over Brexit fears
- ICANN pushes IANA under Conrad
- .film gTLD sees spike after dropping restrictions
- UN ruling may put .io domains at risk
- Updated: More .amazon delay as governments cancel talks
- Expect more Whois accuracy emails under new ICANN policy
- Namazi named new GDD boss
- Pritz quits Whois privacy group as work enters impossible second phase
- Yanks beat Aussies to accountancy gTLD
- Surprise! Most private Whois look-ups come from Facebook
- Google launches .dev with some big-name anchor tenants
- The internet is about to get a lot gayer
- Claims UDRP has cost over $360 million so far
- Ironic eight-figure deal marks more Euro-registrar consolidation
- Court rules generic dictionary domains CAN be trademarked
- ICANN director Burr leaving Neustar
- Right of the colon? IDN getting killed over dot confusion
- Despite Afilias lawsuit, Neustar names date for Indian takeaway
- Endurance domain revenue dips
- After ICANN knockback, Amazon countries agree to .amazon talks
- Operation September Thrust leads to another million-domain Radix gTLD
- Brexit blamed as .eu hits six-year low
- CentralNic expects flat profit as revenue almost doubles
- XYZ reveals .monster gTLD launch dates
- Huge batch of Afilias TLDs approved in China
.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!