.Baby and .MLS new TLDs awarded.
Two new top level domain names contention sets were resolved at auction today. The auction with six participants ended with a lower price than the one with just two.
Consumer products company Johnson & Johnson won .Baby with a $3,088,888 bid. It beat out Google, Minds + Machines, Donuts, Radix and Famous Four in the auction.
Johnson & Johnson also owns the domain name Baby.com.
Canadian Real Estate Association beat Afilias in the auction for .MLS, paying $3,359,000. CREA tried everything it could to avoid an auction, but it failed in both its Community Priority Evaluation and Legal Rights Objection against the Afilias’ bid.
So instead of just paying to win at the auction, it spent a lot on lawyers and an additional community application for the domain. Given the results in some other objections, it might have been worth rolling the dice.
So now they can “upgrade” to baby.baby? Frankly, I’d rather have the one Baby.com instead of all the .baby’s in the world. OK, so they now own the both, but perhaps they should look at it like a defensive registration and just parse a few domains out on an “as needed” basis. Keep the Baby.com relevant and unique.
my.baby (after they ask 2-char release), cute.baby, hello.baby, jnj.baby, johnsons.baby and many other options… all of those domains for the price of the TLD plus registry operational costs. They can make it be worthy of it, although no brand so far did.
Given how they currently use Baby.com, I’ll be really curious to see if this ends up being just defensive or if they have better plans for using it.
Their money would have been better spent promoting Baby.com. Now they will just throw good money after bad.