back to article Someone (cough, cough VeriSign) just gave ICANN $135m for the rights to .web

An unnamed organization just paid $135m for the rights to sell ".web" domain names. This is three times the previous record of $45m for .shop, and seven times the average auction price for top-level domains. The massive price tag has raised eyebrows in the domain name industry, not least because one of the companies taking …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ghetto domains. Ghetto domains everywhere.

  2. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Holmes

    Woah!

    The wining & dining (not to mention ancillary activities) must have been brobdingnagian.

    so there has to be a significant element of corporate strategy and very deep pockets for the auction price to make sense

    It's the twilight years of the largest financial bubble human history has ever seen in its over 100'000 years of history, nobody has to explain shit anymore.

    1. elDog

      Re: Woah!

      A rare upvote for a mix of possible reality and probable conspiracies that may or may not have a foot in this universe.

      However, I do agree that the time-frame and the who-cares are about right. When the flicker from Earth becomes mere points of weather patterns then those actual sentients will say "It was about time."

    2. Mark 85

      Re: Woah!

      It does smell like the "fix" was in before the auction began, doesn't it? Maybe ICANN is taking the money to get them through the upcoming lean times after the next bubble burst?

      Maybe in a couple of months, someone needs to take a quick look around the parking lot and see how many new Ferraris, etc. are there?

  3. m0rt

    Idiots.

    1. Ole Juul

      Idiots.

      DOT idiots, to be exact.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What are most of those non-registrar companies even going to do with an entire TLD?

    It seems the commercial world has been post-web for a decade. They completely abanonded building their own "web presence" in lieu of a Facebook page.

    Which suited me because a lot of consumer crap completely disappeared from my view when they did that.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      It seems the commercial world has been post-web for a decade. They completely abanonded building their own "web presence" in lieu of a Facebook page.

      Yep, it's free filtering...

    2. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      And the added benefit is the large drop in stupid emails trying to get me interested in something ridiculous because all that inane activity is being posted on walls which I don't have.

      I like Facebook for the fact that it has drawn all the idiots together and keeps them mostly in their own little ball pen. It's like having a soundproofed kids area in a restaurant. You can enjoy the food and the service without being annoyed by all the shrieking.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        "I like Facebook for the fact that it has drawn all the idiots together and keeps them mostly in their own little ball pen. It's like having a soundproofed kids area in a restaurant."

        Until "September" arrives and, as with AOL, the users are given some sort of "gateway" out to the wild internet via a Farcebook interface with buttons and think it's just more of Farcebook.

  5. Graeme Evans

    Page update

    Interestingly, I see two companies listed on that page, for the string 'web/webs'. One is Nu Dot Co LLC, as mentioned in the article. The other is Vistaprint Limited. Same Contention Set number, same amount of dosh forked over, same auction date.

    From Wikipedia (yes, I know): 'Vistaprint is a global, e-commerce brand that produces physical and digital marketing products for small and micro businesses. It was one of the first businesses to offer its customers the capabilities of desktop publishing through the internet when it first launched in 1999. Vistaprint is wholly owned by Cimpress N.V., a publicly traded company based in the Netherlands'.

    ...so it looks like they're making a play for something?

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    in the other auction...

    ...VistaPrint picked up .webs for $1. I wonder who got the best deal?

    1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: in the other auction...

      I don't think I can buy a third level domain for $1, so getting a whole TLD is quite something. Leicester City fans must be shaking their heads in disbelief and thinking "we're not fit to lick their boots".

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I thought Nu was STRAAT (https://icannwiki.com/.inc) who buy up hotel domains?

  8. Raedwald Bretwalda

    A DNS name to indicate use of a particular application protocol? Yeah, that's useful, because everyone is sick of typing "http://example.com" instead of "example.com" in the URL field of their browser. Is it still 1997?

  9. User McUser

    What a waste of money...

    I'm sure the best possible name (obviously "spider.web") will already be taken so there's really no point is there?

  10. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

    Dilution?

    I'm still amazed that we keep getting new "record" bids for TLDs. No matter the perceived "value" of any specific TLD, I'd expected the value to drop with the increase in supply. I suppose it just proves that marketing monkeys really rule the world, not the bean counters. (or the lizards)

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