Recent Posts
- CIRA becomes first new gTLD back-end since 2012
- People are forgetting .com exists — ICANN survey
- Famous Four VP goes solo, claims $400,000 sale
- Watch: Hollywood actors trash Trump, promote .vote
- Could ICANN reject Verisign’s $135m .web bid?
- Chinese investor pumps $7 million into M+M as .vip pushes firm into profit
- Barcelona picked for ICANN 63
- Destroy ICANN! Destroy ICANN with missiles!
- Uniregistry to release 10 million domains on October 4
- .blog gets 600 applications halfway through sunrise
- Verisign data shows new gTLDs drive almost three quarters of Q2 growth
- Customers revolt as GoDaddy buys WordPress tools outfit
- First dot-brand gTLD to go generic after TLS deal
- Correction: what NTIA said about .com pricing
- Relaunch and slashed prices for .whoswho after terrible sales
- US claims option to delay IANA transition as Cruz launches free speech doomsday clock
- .trust gTLD might be for sale as NCC closes domain business
- Tata ponders “buy a school” strategy to release .tata from limbo
- .hotel losers gang up to threaten ICANN with legal bills
- Are .mail, .home and .corp safe to launch? Applicants think so
- Dot Registry backs .africa loser, batters on the ICANN lawsuit floodgates
- West.cn targets Engrish domainers with new .xyz site
- Spurned applicant crowd-funding to fight ICANN for .gay gTLD
- Confused by new gTLDs? Allow this Nominet infographic to make your brain explode
- Registries rebel against ICANN’s Whois upgrade decree
- NamesCon confirms three more shows after being acquired
- Afilias set to get .hotel despite hacking claims
- “Dave” becomes first .blog blogger
- Registrar CEO faces terrorism charges
- Industry lays into Verisign over .com deal renewal
- ICANN lawyers slam “fire him” story “blogger”
- Next new gTLD round could start sooner than expected
- Centuries-old companies both fail community gTLD test
- Afilias buys three gTLDs from Starting Dot
- Donuts rolls the dice with $22.5 million .web lawsuit
- IRP panel crucifies ICANN for lack of transparency
- L’Oreal shows cards on former “closed generic” gTLDs
- Verisign confirms it did fund $135 million .web bid
- Ombudsman trashes ICANN’s rejection of .gay “community”
- Verisign likely $135 million winner of .web gTLD
- Verisign announces .net price increase
- .web could already be a record-breaker as auction enters day two
- M+M billings quadruple on China .vip surge
- “Ditch .com!” government to tell Indians
- Donuts denied! .web auction to go ahead today
- Donuts .web claims “discredited”, ICANN tells court
- Donuts files $10 million lawsuit to stop .web auction
- Domain-hopping torrent site seized, founder arrested
- .web auction to go ahead after ICANN denies Donuts/Radix appeal
- One and two-letter .at domains coming soon
Google buys .app for over $25 million
The fiercely competed new gTLD .app has sold to Google for a record-breaking $25 million.
The company’s Charleston Road Registry subsidiary beat out 12 other applicants for the string, including Donuts, Amazon, Famous Four Media, Radix and Afilias.
The auction lasted two days and fetched a winning bid of $25,001,000, more than any other new gTLD to date.
The previous high is believed to be .blog, which I estimate sold for less than $20 million.
Because it was an ICANN-run “last resort” auction, all of the money goes into ICANN’s special auction proceeds fund, which previously stood at just shy of $35 million.
Previous ICANN auctions have fetched prices between $600,000 and $6,760,000.
Google originally proposed .app as a closed registry in which only Google and its partners could register names.
However, after the Governmental Advisory Committee pressured ICANN to disallow “closed generics”, Google changed its application to enable anyone to register.
No doubt that Google has major plans for .app.
Well, the Government Advisory Committee may have pressured ICANN to disallow “closed generics” but it does not appear to have stopped Google sitting on “.app”. Nobody in Google appears to know when the tld will be released nor know anyone in Google who might know. I have written to ICANN but no response as yet!
To be fair, .app hasn’t been delegated and Google hasn’t even signed the contract yet. It’s still in the ICANN process.
I tried to be fair by contacting various relevant departments within Google to find out the situation. Unfortunately, nobody was able to help. Its not as if .app is of fringe interest. I also wrote to ICANN and got no response. I know Google is a big organisation and all that, but they do promote spread of information and it seemed suspicious that they did not explain the situation to their own staff. Anyway, thank you for your comment.
Just FYI, Google has now signed its ICANN contract.
So where to next? How do I find out where, when and how I can register a .app domain name?
When Google launches .app, it will no doubt announce it.
Google may need time to extract all the domains they might ever find a use for!
Well, we are 7 months on now and still no signs of the “.app” TLD. I guess Google can get away with it because they are Google and paid ICANN a lot of money.
All registries can postpone their launch indefinitely.
Exactly. As far as I can establish, you can only complain to ICANN on the basis of some breach of registry specification 11: Public Interest Commitments. Surprise, surprise, it is not a public interest commitment to launch a tld within any specified period. So Google can, and probably will, sit on the .app ltd indefinitely. I’d be interested to know which particular public’s interest that might be. It stinks.