.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 new 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 should 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 because 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 about $100 million to acquire the .co top level domain name, which already had over 1.5 million registrations and an annual revenue run rate of $21 million.
More to come…
Andrew Rosener says
my god
Aron Meystedt says
This 100%. wow
Marek says
Why you think $135 million is too much for .web? Is $8.5 billion for Skype a reasonable price? Does $26.2 billion for LinkedIn make more sense? It is about shares, stocks, profit. Not about return of investment from actual sale. That’s what the United States are about. Cheating on stocks. Value or better said market capitalization of Facebook is $362.83 billion, but Ford only $49.91 billion. How come that Facebook is almost 8 times more valued than Ford? Where is such value? It’s capitalism. Virtual value, virtual money, no grounds.
Acro says
One obvious winner: ICANN. 😀
Dot Advice says
Agreed on that one ! $235 M now LOCKED up . Unacceptable.
Acro says
How’s that multi-stakeholder model working ? Pretty well, it seems. 😀
VintCerf.com says
It’s BS like all of ICANN.
Marek says
Verisign can make that money back very easily. After Sunrise period all .COM owners will have a choice to register matching .WEB names. Serious businesses will pay, and so most of domainers. If you have nice valuable .COM name, if .WEB has a reasonable rate, you will purchase matching .WEB, correct? I would…
Tom says
Agreed. That would be really smart of Verisign to do.
Reza Sardeha says
You’ve got to love auction mechanisms. If Verisign is the winner I wouldn’t be surprised if the guys at the other end of the rope let them pay the premium for the extension.
christat13 says
Well if they can do a million names a year at a $20 margin per name, they will break-even by year seven!
John says
No they won’t. They have overhead cost to consider and this is not cheap so they will be lucky if they break even by year ten
@domains says
That was the last greatest possible new gtld, it’s all downhill from here. You have to think Google got it, with their resources there’s no excuse for letting it slip away.
Mark says
Agreed.
Marino says
Downhill is an understatement. The others all suck. This will kill them.
John says
Next big welcome surprise (would like to see): .web will be released the way new TLD’s like .us, .info, etc. used to be released, with relative equality for all and regular reg fees, not with the huge premiums of the 2010’s.
John says
Personally, I hope Verisign got it, by proxy. As far as I’m concerned Google is evil, despite some of their services being valuable, so it would be tragic if they got it. And what Neustar has done (and not done) with .us is such a huge travesty that I would consider it a huge travesty as well if they got .web. Affilias might also be a good one to have gotten it.
DNSal.es says
@John: any prediction of they will do with it and at what prices? Spider.web anyone?
John says
None, sorry. And I’m not getting the thread subscription emails lately, so I may not see anything here unless I revisit the thread, which I just did now.
John says
And of course, there is still the question of whether anyone is ever going to be willing to fully and honestly discuss all of this:
http://domainincite.com/20789-donuts-files-10-million-lawsuit-to-stop-web-auction/comment-page-1#comment-401264
Mason says
.web will disappoint like all new GTLDs have.
There are worshippers who think that .web will bring them to the lost city to share the spoils with the domaining gods.
Think about it, if they paid $135M for an extension, they have to reserve all the good stuff, put premiums on the in between stuff, and sell the rest of the crap for $15.
Wtf is the difference between web and net nothing!
Dilution of the crap, web is a dated term check your SSN numbers against that of the cheerleaders of this extension
Fernando Espana says
TBT. Bring back the $50/year registration fee. (For non-premium names)
Paul K says
Lets hope they do a $.01 per name to get started 🙂
Build up those numbers.
Auction Watcher says
By best guess is that Adam Dicker is the mysterious new person behind Nu Dot Co, using his millions taken from duped customers and victims to bring Nu Dot Co’s bid over the top.
Ha ha, just a little domaining gallows humor.
Dot Advice says
Not surprised at all. After all ,Verisign’s .com market cap is $9.5 B . Let the not. com paradigm shift begin.
John McCormac says
Certainly going to be fun watching this. Google doesn’t seem to have much of a clue about TLDs so hopefully it is not the winner. The worst case is that it could turn out to be another .MOBI – a TLD so full of options until technology (the smart phone and mobile devices) overtook it.
Ryan says
Mobi had a specific purpose of a mobile browser.
.web much like .online, and .net has always been seen as the generic second cousin to the .com.
Like if you can’t get the .com, .web might hold you over.
They are coming at this $135M in the hole, Google could write this off as a project, the others have experience in the space.
When compared .co they had $25 renewals in play against 1.5M registrations. Even though they offer discounts on year 1 new registrations.
The Chinese hype machine had people running to register .ws, for whatever reason, we have come a very far ways down from those days just 6 months ago now.
I can tell you domainers that were once bullish about gtld’s, are exhasuted after 2 years of selling their best names to pay for endless renewals.
.web will be no different, only difference is there will be another round of credit card touting fools lining up to throw their money way.
I am all for it, this is the best way to learn your lesson.
John McCormac says
The problem with some of these new gTLD is that they can be as much as five years out of date by the time they hit the market. The .MOBI was a classic example of a good idea, at the time, being overtaken by technology. The .TEL may have been a good idea when first proposed but delays and marketing effectively doomed the TLD to being a non-core TLD (ie not com and not ccTLD).
And there’s still the fallout from the Chinese bubble registrations of Q3/Q4 2015 and Q1 2016 yet to come.
Scott Alliy says
Wow Wow Wow! gtldaftermarket.com value just rose. Not personally seeing a huge consumer / end user / business market for GTLDs to support this level of investment yet myself. But with these types of investments either the registries know something the rest of us 20 year domain industry vets don’t or they have a startling aversion to risk or maybe a massive gambling addiction.
Ivan Rasskazov says
$135 million is not an astronomical sum for a well funded VC or a technology firm such as Google. They would be willing to take on risk for that level of present value.
It will be interesting to watch.
DonnyM says
.Web makes sense for google. At 135m you need to spend an extra 25-50 million just to get it going. Google would not have to do that. They could Drop a web name in your gmail box for free. 🙂 No advertising needed.
They have everything else. I really think this is why they started google domains. It really does not matter who bought it because regardless it means more money is coming into domaining:)
Andrew Allemann says
I doubt it’s Google
John says
Sure hope not.
Michael Riedl says
Come on, ICANN, tell us who the winner is!
YamadaMedia says
I think Google or Neustar.
steve says
$135 million — that’s what Yahoo paid Henrique de Castro for 6 months of work in 2013, after being terminated by Marisa Mayer.
& Yahoo just got acquired for $4.8 Billion, about what it basically paid for the URL broadcast.com in 1999.
Still, I believe .app and .web are the best GTLD extensions with the most potential.
I do not feel 80% of the GTLD extensions will still have any significance within 5 years — namely, existing, but stagnant growth, or lack thereof
steve says
YHOO purchased the company and technology of Broadcast.com, but the technology didn’t work. But at least you got a URL broadcast.com for $5 Billion. Those were the days —
Ryan says
It has to be Web.com, they already have marks on their current brand, they are best integrated to release it.
I think Google would be out after $100M, they got lots of other things they can work with.
LongIsland.com says
I agree. Web.com
Andrew Allemann says
Looks like Verisign bought it:
https://domainnamewire.com/2016/07/28/looks-like-verisign-bought-web-domain-135-million-sec-filing/
John says
Nice, and of course yours truly supported that above.
Philip Corwin says
These funds do not go into ICANN general revenues. They will be added to the $105 million in segregated proceeds from the other last resort auctions with the ultimate use(s) determined by the ICANN community. My personal preference is to set up a separate foundation and use the money as an endowment funds for worthy Internet-related projects, and not to squander it in a one-time helicopter drop.
I have to think that whoever spent $135 million to acquire .web intends to launch a serious marketing campaign to compete with .com.
Philip Corwin says
Revising my prior remarks, if Verisign was indeed backing the winning bidder then my last thought is voided.
Scott Alliy says
Makes sense forthem to create their own fortune in a space designed to create alternatives to their bread and butter IMO. The question is does .web extenstion fit into sensible brand application. Cucumber.web? Roofshingles.web? needle.web? The only thing I couls think of that might justify the investment is that they are considering a closed web ala AOL or Facebook
sandeep says
I like that and i am injoying and this sit is ousame so nice , and of course yours truly supportd that abov.
sandeep says
So thank you i joyned thed sit
sandeep says
Thankyou i allvays injoying so thankyou
sandeep says
I have wininng this prais and than i have no answer but of course i win
AFA Advisory says
Huge investment, it will be recovered slowly !