ICANN’s $350 million windfall

ICANN has by now collected $350 million in fresh TLD application fees. And that number will grow.

One of the mysteries of ICANN’s fresh top level domain process is why it’s been so shy regarding releasing the total number of applications received so far. It released the number of application system registered users, but not the number of applications.

That just changed: ICANN disclosed it had 2,091 applications completed or in progress when it took the application system down for security issue. ICANN states there are another 214 potential applications for which payments had not been received or reconciled.

ICANN has by now collected $350 million in application fees. That means even its “high” budget scenario released this stretch is too low.

ICANN will collect well more money per application than it needs to cover historical costs. It also means we’re probably looking at five or more batches of top level domains within the digital archery system.

This may be a very bad thing for ICANN. I can see senators’ phones ringing right now.

“They’ve got how much money?”