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Afilias wins .green auction

Kevin Murphy, March 3, 2014, 18:25:41 (UTC), Domain Registries

Afilias won the auction for the .green new gTLD, it emerged today.
Rightside withdrew its application for the string in the last few days, according to the ICANN web site, leaving Afilias the only remaining applicant in the four-way contention set.
Top Level Domain Holdings said last week that it had lost a private auction with Afilias and Rightside. The fourth applicant, Dot Green, withdrew last year citing the likely cost of an auction.
It’s not known how much Afilias paid in the auction, but it’s likely to have been in the millions.


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Comments (11)

  1. They should have sold me the application instead of withdrawing.
    If anyone else is planning on withdrawing – contact me first.
    Thanks

    • ursinger says:

      hey daniel,
      its alway a matter of the price 😉 how are u? gonna meet in singapore? cheers from germany

      • I am great – We are rocking away signing up RRA’s with our registrars. XYZ will be @ Singapore – However most of our team is gearing up our large scale advertising campaigns around the launch of .xyz

  2. Phil Buckingham says:

    Need investment for a winning auction strategy ? Contact us also.

  3. Mike says:

    Why would anyone walk away from an auction, that was going to yield a 7 figure proceed from the auction?

    • Rubens Kuhl says:

      That depends on the burn rate of the organization, the ROI could or could not be good.
      It also depends on whether getting more money just to live until losing at auction is compatible with your mission; for DotGreen, it might not be.
      And on a general note, if Amazon or Google is in the contention set, there is 0 to gain by not withdrawing.

      • Mike says:

        “And on a general note, if Amazon or Google is in the contention set, there is 0 to gain by not withdrawing.”
        Those companies are more into private auction than you’d think. I think you’ll see some movement with them soon. Earlier some might have said something similar about Uniregistry, but now Uniregistry has participated in the applicant auction.

        • Not Com Tom says:

          I’ll respectfully disagree Mike. Google and Amazon have the least to gain from a private auction. They want all their strings and are not interested in padding competitors bankrolls for other sets.
          Smaller portfolio applicants will win some, but will pay dearly for them.
          imho

        • Rubens Kuhl says:

          Uniregistry never took issue with giving other applicants money, only with legal consequences. Portfolio applicants know they have similar business models and funding capabilities, so they don’t mind losing some and wining some.
          Amazon and Google know that every $ they give on 1 string will byte them at other strings. I only see them doing private deals among themselves, as they are both billion dollar companies, or doing private auctions where the money goes to a neutral party (like DNA).

  4. Not Com Tom says:

    Google and Amazon seem to be serious about their tlds. We’re going to see some big auction prices for the marquis strings when the last resort auctions start. If .green and .wedding are worth several millions, .shop, .art, .app, .web and quite a few others should be well into 8 figures – with nothing for the losers.
    Portfolio applicants with $50 – $100 mil could end up with a small handful of strings from the high powered contention sets.
    But they’ll be worth it 🙂

  5. Guess says:

    How wonderful that this process now goes to those with the deepest pockets instead of companies that pioneered the space.
    Image Online Design spent 20 years championing .web and working to see new TLDs happen, only to have ICANN and the courts tell them to piss up a rope if they didn’t pay the bribe money to ICANN and other applicants.
    Sad. Almost criminal.

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