
Google is buying the entire '.app' domain for a Whopping $25M - mascot6699
http://www.dridgag.com/2015/02/google-is-buying-entire-app-domain-for.html
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Alupis
How does a single company go about buying an entire TLD? Doesn't seem very
"forward looking" for ICANN. Pretty soon it will turn out like our .com issue
which all "premium" domains already purchased and/or squatted on.

As an aside, I really don't like all these "cutsy" TLD's that are showing up.
To me, whenever I see a .info or .biz, I'm already wary of the link... now
there's things like .ninja, .technology, .academy, .bargains, .bid, .build,
.builders, etc etc etc...

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moron4hire
I would really like to know what the deal is with .blue and .red. Most of the
other ones I can kind of see. Some seem to be just renamings of ones we
already have (like .academy vs. .edu). But just a color?

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yincrash
.blue and .red? Do you mean .white and .orange?

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moron4hire
There is also .black.

Oh hell, there's even a TLD for a specific university now!

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Alupis
Namecheap has 27 pages of new gTLD's[1]... oh my....

[1] [https://www.namecheap.com/domains/new-
tlds/explore.aspx](https://www.namecheap.com/domains/new-tlds/explore.aspx)

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nvk
This extended TLDs are the biggest scam ICANN ever pulled. Huge money grab for
companies to buy more to defend their brands.

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jessaustin
What percentage of companies are dumb enough to buy domains on these new tlds
purely "to defend their brands"? Is Walmart going to buy "walmart.diamonds"
and "walmart.condos"? I doubt it, but whatever, I'm not sad that there is a
new tax on corporate stupidity.

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romaniv
I think the parent speaks about stuff like microsoft.app. (Which, IMO, should
be .apps, plural.)

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jessaustin
_.apps, plural._

Seems like a perfectly cromulent TLD. b^) One of Google's competitors should
file with ICANN right away!

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mathiasben
"Currently Google lets people register for ".how," ".soy," and ".minna"
domains one its own ICANN-accredited domain registry."

So this is what google has planned for these TLDs? reselling domain names.
That piece from a couple of days ago describing how google and Microsoft have
switched places makes more sense now. google is using it's cash to create some
additional revenue streams. such a basic play, a la network solutions circa
1998. wow.

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quadrangle
All these new gTLDs area obnoxious. They are poisoning the reputation of
legitimate and important TLDs like .coop which has been around nearly 15 years
and is a legitimate domain that people now guess is one of these new crop of
crap

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.coop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.coop)

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untog
To be fair, this might be the best of a bad world. Google plans to make this
TLD available for people to register (like they have with .how). One of other
companies in the bidding for the TLD was Amazon, who had no intention of
letting outside parties register domains.

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TeMPOraL
Which means Google created themselves almost-infinite money pump. They just
have to sell 250k of these domains for $100 to break even.

~~~
untog
Like I said, best of a bad world.

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mascot6699
The official news was released a long time ago
[http://googleblog.blogspot.in/2012/05/expanding-internet-
dom...](http://googleblog.blogspot.in/2012/05/expanding-internet-domain-
space.html)

~~~
Zikes
That is their announcement for their plans to purchase those domains, but with
competition and a particularly long application process with ICANN they only
just officially acquired .app.

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troymc
If you're curious about how ICANN's "New generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD)
Program" works, check out
[http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/about](http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/about)

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BrianEatWorld
How does bidding for something like this work?

Say I am an individual and I heard about the new .app domain coming online and
I just wanted my own brianeatworld.app domain, but Google sets out to buy the
entire space. Is my bid simply ignored?

If my bid for the single domain ended up being higher than Google's on a per
domain basis, would I be able to get my domain? Is that even possible given
that there are theoretically an infinite number of domains for any given TLD?
Doesn't the infinite number of domains mean that the price Google is paying
for an individual domain in the TLD approaches zero?

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dragonwriter
> Say I am an individual and I heard about the new .app domain coming online
> and I just wanted my own brianeatworld.app domain, but Google sets out to
> buy the entire space. Is my bid simply ignored?

It doesn't work that way. They are petitioned for and auctioned off as TLDs,
its only _after_ that has occurred that the new TLD is announced as "coming
online". Google and others bid for the .app TLD, and auction occurred, and
Google won the auction. _If_ they use it to allow registrations (as some on
this thread have said they intend to, but I haven't seen anything official --
for some of their new gTLDs they have announced this, e.g., .how, for others
they have said they are using them for their own products, e.g., .plus),
_then_ you will be able to register a domain like brianeatworld.app through
Google or one of their registration partners.

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aarestad
Who actually are they buying this from? ICANN? Or some other TLD suppliers?

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andrewstuart2
TLD squatters. Same exact problem as before, just more expensive.

[http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/customer-
service/faq...](http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/customer-
service/faqs/faqs-en#application)

~~~
logicallee
what, you can just tld squat? (without founding a nation)?

How is that not like squatting on all domain names that start with an "a"? I
mean, how can it be technically possible.

Did some guy just pay 20 bucks for the .app tld and ICANN was like, cool,
nobody has registered this one yet - you can have it?

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VieElm
I think the minimum price for setting up a TLD is tens of thousands of
dollars, and it doesn't have to be a country it can be any kind of string,
like .pepsi or .beef or anything.

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Alupis
Quick, someone register .pepsi and .coke then do nothing with them until
either company pays you... of wait, we're right back at the domain squatting
thing again?

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notatoad
No, because it's not an open registration process. it's an application
process, and if you or i tried to acquire the .pepsi TLD it would be denied
outright (and our $185k application fee would be forfeit).

New gTLDs (like .app) which receive multiple applications and have no clear
owner are opened to an auction among the qualified applicants. Other more
specific applications are given to the most qualified applicant (for example,
i know the applicant for .ski has been endorsed by the USSA and FIS, the
american and international governing bodies for skiing)

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blfr
Any idea what they might want to use it for? Give every Android app a domain?
Just sell domains like every other registry?

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alex_sf
My first thought was an integration with GAE. Right now the default URL for a
GAE app is foo.appspot.com. foo.app is quite a bit cleaner (and subtly
advertises GAE).

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godzillabrennus
I guess they see it as a good long term investment. Hope it pans out for them.

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meesterdude
why are they buying TLD's? why is anyone allowed to buy TLD's? This doesn't
seem like it will bode well for consumers; .app seems like it would have a lot
of demand.

I think the broader naming options are good to have, though they should have
done this way sooner.

Trying to register a .com today and its just impossible to find a name that's
already taken. most all you find are squatters. I know some people don't like
the new ones but its necessary at this point - we're running out of room.

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larrys
"most all you find are squatters."

Everyone likes to think that of course.

However you are assuming that if what you call a "squatter" as a pejorative
didn't have the name it would be available and wouldn't have been grabbed
prior to you wanting that particular name by someone else. Like a flower shop
in Omaha or General Electric?

At least people in the domain business are in the business to sell domains.
Every try to buy a domain that google or any large company owns? I have. Money
doesn't even matter to them at all. They don't need more money, right?

I have a case now where I am trying to buy a name for a client that will pay
$500,000 USD for it plus stock options. And the corporation that owns the name
(not google but a company in the UK) has no interest at all in parting with
the name at even those price levels. Part of the reason is that the people in
corporate jobs don't personally stand to gain by selling the domain the money
doesn't go into their pocket. So they aren't motivated by economic benefits at
all which makes it particularly difficult to get deals like that done
(although there are other ways for sure).

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lameduck
How will that TLD work when people want to _search_ for an app instead of
hitting a url? How could you distinguish between them in Chrome's omnibar?

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politician
It's these kinds of articles that leave me pining for distributed (blockchain)
DNS built into browsers.

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JDiculous
Feels like a monopoly...

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gress
Google owns the open web.

