Two records at the same time were set at the ICANN auction that took place on February 25. One of the gTLDs that was auctioned off was .APP domain. First of all, 12 bidders participated in the auction - the highest number so far. But another record is a lot more significant - the amount of money paid by the winner. Charleston Road Registry (affiliated with Google), won the right to administer this domain for $25.001.000. This is a more than three times bigger figure than the previous record ($6.760.000) paid by Radix for .TECH domain.
ICANN auctions are the considered the last resort and are used only when applicants can’t come to an agreement among themselves. Far more often the fate of the new gTLDs is decided during private bidder auctions, the financial information from which is never disclosed. Nevertheless, according to experts, the amount of money paid by Google for the .APP domain is not lower than what most of the winners pay at private auctions.
Some domain analysts earlier noted a slowdown of Google’s activity in relation to new domains and expressed concern that the corporation might reconsider its attitude towards them. However, the results of the current auction prove that Google is still interested a lot in the new gTLDs, at least in the ones it finds promising.
