Last week, GoDaddy announced the acquisition of MMX domain assets, namely, 28 new gTLDs. The deal is worth $120 million. The parties have already shaken hands on it, but several issues still need to be sorted out in order to make the deal valid. First of all, the acquisition has to be approved by ICANN. It is unlikely that there would be problems, but one should keep in mind that a year ago, ICANN blocked the acquisition of the PIR registry that manages the .ORG domain. However, it must be admitted that neither of the MMX domains has such public significance as .ORG. And in all other cases, ICANN usually approves selling and purchasing domain zones.
The position of the Chinese government could be more problematic. According to Domain Incite, many leading domains managed by MMX, and in particular, its largest domain .VIP, are popular mostly in China. A TLD registry in this country can only operate subject to a permission of the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. MMX managed to receive such permission in the past, and now GoDaddy has to do the same. It is hard to say whether there is any reason for concern, because the approval process is absolutely non-transparent and nobody knows what criteria the government officials use to make a decision. What is obvious is that GoDaddy would be reluctant to purchase domains without being able to use them in a country where they are most popular.
