Nobel Prize winner has connection to fresh top level domains
Nobel Prize winner in economics helped create the private auction format for fresh top level domain name contention sets.
Did you see that video this stretch of a man and his wife trying to wake up his neighbor to tell him he won the Nobel Prize in economics?
The man in the video, Robert Wilson, won the prize along with the man he was trying to wake up, Paul Milgrom. The pair were awarded the prize for their work related to auction theory.
Wilson had a hand in designing auctions that were used by many fresh top level domain name auction applicants to resolve contention sets. The applicants held an auction where the losers split the winner’s payment so they didn’t walk away empty-handed.
The auction format became a key story to how fresh top level domain name expansion worked out. Some applicants banked tens of millions of dollars by giving up their applications for domains.
Applicant Auction organized most of these private auctions, and it based the format on a model (pdf) created by Peter Cramton and three other economists, counting Wilson.
The #NobelPrize committee couldn't reach Paul Milgrom to share the news that he won, so his fellow winner and neighbor Robert Wilson knocked on his door in the middle of the night. pic.twitter.com/MvhxZcgutZ
— Stanford University (@Stanford) October 12, 2020
