.Shop top level domain sells for staggering $41.5 million: Breaking
$41.5 million spent for rights to a single fresh top level domain name.
An auction to determine which firm will control the .shop top level domain name has concluded with a record price of $41,501,000.
GMO Registry, a Japanese domain name firm, was the last bidder standing.
It defeated six other bidders, counting Amazon.com and Google.
Only GMO Registry and one other firm bid above $15 million for the name.
The final bid price is sure to turn heads with the lackluster results of other fresh top level domain names that have launched to date. I’d love to see the financial projections behind GMO’s bid.
The battle for .shop has been long and heavily contested, in part since one applicant tried to circumvent an auction with some rather silly disputes. Commercial Connect tried to argue .shop was a community top level domain, and it also stated that a number of IDNs were confusingly similar to .shop.
Commercial Connect didn’t participate in the auction but filed a last-minute reconsideration request yesterday claiming that it shouldn’t have lost its bid for community status.
ICANN has now collected over $100 million from fresh top level domain name auctions, but has yet to decide how to spend the money.
