.Web top level domain name auction ends for $135 million: Breaking
.Web domain sets a record.
The auction to determine who gets to run the .web top level domain name has concluded with a $135 million price.
This is by far the most paid to run a top level domain name. Prior to this auction, the highest public price for a fresh top level domain was $41.5 million, which GMO Registry paid for .shop.
Afilias, Google, Nu Dot Co, Radix, Donuts, Schlund, and Web.com participated in the auction for .web. I don’t know who won, but ICANN ought to publish details later today.
Depending on who the victor is, there might be some post-auction fighting. Donuts sued ICANN to try to stop the auction since it believes that Nu Dot Co might have needed to update its application to show a change in control. Nu Dot Co and ICANN dispute this.
Nu Dot Co was the only applicant to request that the auction be handled by ICANN, which means the money will go into a bucket for an as-yet-unknown use. If it had been a private auction amongst the applicants, the losers would have split the proceeds. That clearly would have been a lot of money.
To put the .web final price in perspective, Neustar paid regarding $100 million to acquire the .co top level domain name, which by now had over 1.5 million registrations and an annual revenue run rate of $21 million.
More to come…
