Google Wins The new gTLD .APP For $25 Million

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The new gTLD .APP sold for $25 Million to Google today in a ICANN Last Resort Auction which I think is very good news for the new gTLD program in general.

This is the highest price paid in an ICANN Last Resort Auction.

It looks like Google was willing to pay over $30 Million based on the info published by ICANN today

The previously high price paid for a new gTLD in an ICANN Last Resort Auction was $6,760,000 which was paid by Radix for .Tech.

Radix was also a bidder for .APP

.APP had the largest number of new gTLD applicants of all new gTLD’s.

There were 13 companies that applied to operate the new gTLD .APP. One applicant withdrew their application months ago leaving 12 applicants.

This is only the 11th new gTLD contention set to be settled at an ICANN Last Resort Auction.

Most of the new gTLD extensions that had more than one applicant were settled in “private” auctions.

While, the results of private auctions are not disclosed, but since some of the participants in these auctions are public company’s there have been some good guesses as to how much the new gTLD’s have sold for in private auctions.

The highest price paid in a private auction has been reported to be around $20-$25 Million.

The proceeds of private auctions are basically split amongst the other applicants or losing bidders while at the ICANN auction all the proceeds go to ICANN (except for auctioneer fees).

ICANN took in almost $35 Million in the ten Last Resort Auctions that took place previous to the auction for .APP

.App had 12 bidders;

APP Registry Inc (Cayman Islands)

Afilias

Amazon

Aquent.com

Donuts

DotApp Inc

Famous Four

Google

Merchant Law Group LLP

Minds + Machines

Radix

Straat.co

About Michael Berkens

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 8K domain names . Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest.

Comments

  2. Steven Sikes says

    Completely makes sense that Google would go all in for .app, as deep links within apps will generate major ad revenues. Google has made acquisitions in the “deep links” arena, as well as developing technologies to support deep links navigation and search.

    This could also enhance the value(s) of “app” domains, like cloudapp.com (Microsoft) and more: myapp.com, chat, business, enterprise, wallet, geo, banking, scan (app).com

    • Raymond Hackney says

      Agree Steve when they didn’t get .blog and did not go crazy on any others, I thought this is the one they have to get.

  3. BrianWick says

    Steven –
    My point is good business says Google will be giving preference to dot app over all the rest of the tlds and maybe even cut into dot com for direct matches left of the dot. But in doing so they may be reducing the quality of the entire search engine in general.

    What are “Deep Links” ?

    Bri

  4. Steven Sikes says

    Deep Links or “Deep Linking” and “Messaging Interfaces” (notifications on mobile phones, which if clicked, they will generate a data page (available hotel room/restaurant menu, and anything else you can dream) perhaps could transform how people consume and navigate the Internet, due to smartphones, apps, and wearables (which will finally kick into “gear” (no pun) after Apple Watch launches this Spring)

    https://developers.google.com/app-indexing/webmasters/app

    It’s still early, as it’s still “early adopter” stage (similar to the year 1996, as phase for the World Wide Web)

    • h4ck3r says

      And what impacts would a domain extension have on any of that?

      I don’t see the relevance of a domain name which is used to resolve to an IP with what appears to be a App “sitemap”. The internet is going to change but it’s not going to be driven by gTLDs. I’m pretty certain of that.

      • Steven Sikes says

        “The internet is going to change but it’s not going to be driven by gTLDs. I’m pretty certain of that”

        True, but certain gTLDs, especially .APP, if owned by Apple, Google or Microsoft, could create significant changes. 80% of Smartphone usage is via Apps, including Messaging. If you have the resources to index App content, you also can create a mobile or wearable UI for queries to fetch data across multiple apps, in conjunction with personalized and contextual data sets , rather than just opening an app at a time,.

        • h4ck3r says

          I understand the principle. I don’t see where the dns name comes into play.

          We’ve had sitemaps for years and they work across all TLDs and most content. If you create an appmap where does the domain fit in? It might make some sense if they maintain strict control over registrations (only real registered apps etc) but not a lot more.

          They already control distribution through Playstore / AppStore so don’t see any advantage to a TLD.

          All the information you could ever want is there even without .APP.

          I guess we’ll have to see what the big G comes up with. Maybe they’ll do something massively amazing that surprises me.

          • Gary Myers says

            Their application did state that the domain would only be available to application developers, and registrars would need to do some (undefined) check, and that domains could be suspended.

            My guess would be it will relate more to their appengine cloud offering than mobile apps.