Recent Posts
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- L’Oreal is using “closed generic” .makeup in an interesting way
- Four in 10 new gTLDs are shrinking
- Domain growth flat in Q2
- Another ccTLD plays down the “com”
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- MMX sells 7,000 domains for $3.4 million
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- Pilot program for Whois killer launches
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- Registry bosses to talk ICANN “tax cuts” at private meeting
- Another auDA director quit in secret
- .CLUB nears profitability, talks renewals and “trial” domains
- Deutsch and Doria to join ICANN board
- Afnic appoints Pierre Bonis new CEO
- After slow launch, .africa looks to add hundreds of resellers
- No $17 million rebate for struggling new gTLDs
- MMX: three gTLDs approved for sale in Beijing
- .museum soon could be open to all (no haters please)
- CentralNic promises $30 million .sk will only ever mean “Slovakia”
- Former MarkMonitor execs join new brand protection registrar
- Five million Indian government workers to get IDN email
- ZACR to delete 12,000 .za domains next week
- GoDaddy’s reason for dumping Uniregistry doesn’t make a lot of sense
- GoDaddy CEO to retire at 58
- Google shifts 400,000 .site domains
- Another auDA director quits after conflict claims
- Endurance losing founder-CEO next week
- Google dumps Nazi domain in hours
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- Tucows revenue rockets after Enom buy
- GoDaddy domains business grows 15% in Q2
- Gay.com, “worth $7 million”, donated to gay blog
- Grumpy campaign claims victory after auDA U-turns
- Iran rep reported to ICANN Ombudsman, again
- .storage to have pricey second sunrise
- HTC dumps its dot-brand
- Halloran made ICANN’s first chief data protection officer
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- EFF recommends against new gTLDs
- auDA chair quits days before vote to fire him
- Crocker: no date on next new gTLD round
- Donuts to complete Rightside acquisition tonight
- MMX says .vip renewals running at 75%
- auDA now looking to outsource .au registry
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.