Dish DBS beats Google in .Dot auction, pays $700,000 for domain

Dish won a two way race to operate the top level domain name .dot.

Dish DBS, the satellite TV company and owner of Blockbuster, has beaten Google in a public auction for the top level domain .Dot. It paid $700,000 for the rights to the domain name.

You’re not misreading this – the domain name is .dot.

So soon, you might be able to visit Blockbuster at Blockbuster-dot-dot.

In its application for the domain name, Dish said it plans to use the domain name for its own businesses.

Google considered the domain name a “pun”, according to its application:

The purpose of the proposed gTLD, .dot, is to provide the marketplace with a creative alternative gTLD to .com. [Google] believes in the commercial viability of the proposed gTLD, .dot, given the pun of the phrase ʺsecond-level domain name dot dot.”

It’s not a very good pun, if you ask me. It’s apparently dot worth even a million bucks.