M+M raises $4.4m losing latest gTLD auctions
Minds + Machines made $4.4 million losing three recent new gTLD auctions, according to a company press release.
It’s withdrawn bids for .latino, .school and a third string it said it could not disclose due to the rules of the private auction.
M+M now says it has $45 million cash on hand.
So far, the company has withdrawn 31 new gTLD applications, almost half of its original 70. Not all of those were lost at auction.
It has 17 contested applications left and expects those contention sets to be resolved one way or the other by the end of June 2015.
Another 11 new gTLDs won at auction
It’s been a busy week for new gTLD application withdrawals, with no fewer than 11 contention sets getting settled over the last few days.
First, as predicted, Radix won .online, after I-Registry withdrew the last remaining competing application, but only with a little help from its friends.
Radix is to form a new joint venture with Tucows and NameCheap to run .online. Each company threw in $4 million to $5 million to cover the cost of the auction and seed funding for the yet-to-be-formed new registry entity.
Another auction saw .site also won by Radix, as a standalone applicant, after withdrawals from Interlink, M+M, Google and Donuts.
.dog went to Donuts after withdrawals from Minds + Machines and Google. Donuts also won .live, after an earlier withdrawal from Microsoft and one this week from Google.
The hotly contested .cloud went to Aruba after withdrawals from M+M, Symantec, Amazon, Google, CloudNames and Donuts.
.boats was won by DERboats after Donuts withdrew.
.book has gone to Amazon, after withdrawals from R.R. Bowker, Famous Four Media, Donuts, DotBook, M+M, Global Domain Registry, Google and NU DOT CO.
Amazon also won .hot, after Donuts and dotHot (affiliated with .jobs) withdrew.
Dish DBS, a Spanish-language US TV company, will operate .latino as a closed dot-brand for its Dish Latino service, after M+M withdrew its competing application.
Japanese domain registrar Interlink won .earth, beating Google.
Motion Picture Domain Registry beat Donuts and Google to .film, meaning the gTLD will “will only be available to film producers and major film studios” under the applicant’s plan to require a Motion Picture Association of America registration number in order to register a name.
TLDH applies for 92 gTLDs, 68 for itself
Top Level Domain Holdings is involved in a grand total of 92 new generic top-level domain applications, many of them already known to be contested.
Sixty-eight applications are being filed on its own behalf, six have been submitted via joint ventures, and 18 more have been submitted on behalf of Minds + Machines clients.
Here’s the list of its own applications:
.abogado (Spanish for .lawyer), .app, .art, .baby, .beauty, .beer, .blog, .book, .casa (Spanish for .home), .cloud, .cooking, .country, .coupon, .cpa, .cricket, .data, .dds, .deals, .design, .dog, .eco, .fashion, .fishing, .fit, .flowers, .free, .garden, .gay, .green, .guide, .home, .horse, .hotel, .immo, .inc, .latino, .law, .lawyer, .llc, .love, .luxe, .pizza, .property, .realestate, .restaurant, .review, .rodeo, .roma, .sale, .school, .science, .site, .soccer, .spa, .store, .style, .surf, .tech, .video, .vip, .vodka, .website, .wedding, .work, .yoga, .zulu, 网址 (.site in Chinese), 购物 (.shopping in Chinese).
There’s a lot to note in that list.
First, it’s interesting to see that TLDH is hedging its bets on the environmental front, applying for both .eco (which we’ve known about for years) and .green.
This puts it into contention with the longstanding Neustar-backed DotGreen bid, and possibly others we don’t yet know about, which should make for some interesting negotiations.
Also, both of TLDH’s previously announced Indian city gTLDs, .mumbai and .bangaluru, seem to have fallen through, as suspected.
Other contention sets TLDH is now confirmed to be involved in include: .blog, .site, .immo, .hotel, .home, .casa, .love, .law, .cloud, .baby, .art, .gay, .style and .store.
The company said in a statement:
During the next six months, TLDH will focus its efforts on marketing and operations for geographic names such as dot London and dot Bayern where it has the exclusive support of the relevant governing authority, as well as any other gTLDs that TLDH has filed for that are confirmed to be uncontested on the Reveal Date. Discussions with other applicants regarding contested names will be handled on a case-by-case basis.
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