
Automattic Purchases .blog TLD for $19M - elbigbad
https://ma.tt/2016/05/blog/
======
robalfonso
How this process actually works is you apply to carry a gTLD (ie .blog) this
application fee costs $185,000. If no one else applies for the same string,
you are good to go. If they do there is an auction. The auction works like
this. N parties participate and must provide an escrow account (to bid in good
faith) they may bid up to what they want (and whats in escrow) and the winning
bid pays out to the auctioneer (a minor fee) and the losing parties.

IE 3 parties to this auction (making this up)

automattic - 19 million paid Party 1 - 9.5 million earned Party 2 - 9.5
million earned

You are essentially paying off your competition to go away. There are some
other details and this was the initial process a few years ago, I have not
heard if there are any significant adjustments now.

~~~
vmasto
Any idea how this process manages abuse?

What prevents me from bidding just $500,000 (if I had $500,000) to a TLD that
I know is popular just to make money from the winner?

~~~
curried_haskell
Did you read?

The fact that you pay a $185,000 fee first. And then in order to make your
$500,000 bid, you have to put that money in escrow.

And then, you might accidentally remain the highest bidder and lose all that
money in exchange for your shiny new tld.

~~~
markdown
$685,000 for .blog is a steal. Companies have paid millions for single
domains. It was a _very_ safe bet.

Sounds ripe for abuse if you ask me.

On top of that, think about how many people inside Automattic knew about their
bid. The board at least. Any one of those people could have told a friend that
WP was going to bid for it. Would you not have instantly put in a small bid of
$200,000 if you'd known about this and had the cash?

~~~
xorcist
You pay for the privilege to be a registry. You don't own the domain in the
same sense that you would own mydomain.com.

~~~
markdown
Yes, you own it in an even greater sense... because you basically own an
almost infinite number of names under .blog.

As the registrar, you can choose to not sell any domain names at all other
than the ones you choose to use yourself.

~~~
xorcist
What makes you say that? And what do you mean with "own in a greater sense",
specifically?

I'm far from an expert but I can't see how what you say is compatible with the
ICANN's TLD Registry Agreement (especially section 2.9 and the whole of
article 5).

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crabasa
It's amazing that in the age of Google Search that anyone places any value on
the TLD for a domain. Browser vendors have run dozens of studies that indicate
that most people do not enter fully qualified domains in the address bar,
which is why all address bars are wired into a search provider.

I feel like the the explosion of TLDs is a very thinly veiled money grab aimed
at exploiting two groups of people:

1) Trademark owners

2) Unsophisticated internet marketers

~~~
seizethecheese
TLDs give a business credibility. People are much more likely to shop at
foo.com than foo.info.

~~~
amelius
The question is if people are more likely to visit foo.blog than blog.foo.com.
I don't think that is the case.

~~~
amelius
OTOH, having the ".blog" TLD allows you to start a blogging website (like
Medium), and hand out domain names to your clients.

~~~
010a
... Which literally describes why Automattic bought it. They own Wordpress.

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wineisfine
Why does everyone has such high hopes for ICANN go be correct and ethical?
Their track record reads like the equivalent of a digital mafia.

ICANN raises prices abrtrary regularly. You tell me why a .COM costs suddenly
$0.22 cents more this year. It sure shouldn't be for bandwidth or storage
space regarding the administration of the domain name. In fact, you would
think it would become cheaper.

~~~
Arnt
A few years ago 95% of the bandwidth was malign or useless (ie things like
ddos attacks or endless looks around DNS lookups). If that's increased to 96%
that'll counter any savings cheaper traffic.

ICANN may not be terribly nice, but please be fair.

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fredley
This has made me realise I have no idea what the answer to these questions is:
who did they buy it from? Where does that money go? Who mines/forges/lays new
tlds?

~~~
snuxoll
ICANN.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Who can basically make new TLDs whenever, can't they? At no real cost to
themselves. By what authority to they derive that privilege, why are they
allowed to make such huge sums without doing anything useful for the money?

~~~
alwaysdownvoted
"Who can..." ICANN. Yes it can be whenever they want. No one ever stops them.
They added several in 2001. Now they've opened the floodgates.

"At no real cost..." True. Except the cost of running one of the 13 server
addresses. And IMO it could be a dog and no one would notice. I think the A
server (198.41.0.4) is really all anyone needs. The cost of a new TLD to ICANN
is the cost of editing a text file.

"By what authority..." None.

", why are they allowed..." A question I have been asking for over 20 years.
Answer: Because we let them?

You can say no to ICANN. Run your own root on 127.x.x.x. You can edit the
root.zone to be just as you want it. Want to delete a silly TLD (e.g.,
.loans)? Edit a text file. Want to add your own new TLD? Edit a text file. The
cost? Editing a text file.

I recall a former Board member of ICANN admitting he himself ran his own root
for many years.

ICANN's ability to make millions in profit from TLD's relies on an interesting
prerequisite. All DNS admins have to use a root.hints file that points to the
(13) addresses serving ICANN's root.zone. Often they have no idea this
root.hints file even exists, let alone have the guts to edit it. The root
server addresses to use are chosen by the authors of the DNS software, e.g.,
the software automatically downloads root.hints from ICANN to bootstrap
itself.

If admins or users choose to use a different list of root server addresses
(e.g., 127.x.x.x, 10.x.x.x., etc.), all bets are off.

So how do you stop ICANN from making millions posing as a pseudo licensing
authority for registries? One way is to stop using ICANN's root.hints and use
a different root.zone that you control. If enough people do this then one day
ICANN has no relevance.

Right. Not gonna happen. I'm probably one of only a small number of users who
will ever run their own root.

~~~
Bombthecat
Namecoin tries to break that monopole by using a p2p database with a
blockchain like bitcoin.

So far without any success :)

~~~
pmlnr
That is because it still relies on paying for the domain.

The Tor network can "register" and address ( call it a pointer, because it's
basically a hash ) for .onion. That means if you run the the tor service, you
have a pointer, and this is probably a good solution.

So if we'd all had a distributed global "dns"-like network, where each and
every system gets a unique id this would partially be solved, for free, but
the requirement for master nodes (like tracker servers for torrents ) would
probably still be present.

The problem with this approach is that obviously you can't make a choice for
xyz.mydomain, because there will be at least someone else who wants
xyz.mydomain, and in this case, who and how would decide which of you can have
it? Right now this decision maker is money, which of course is an issue, but
at least a solution.

So: does anyone have a distributed, fair solution, that is able to solve
disputes and act as a replacement for dns? So far I'm not aware of any.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
> We wanted to stay stealth while in the bidding process and afterward in
> order not to draw too much attention

Why, because a major blog host owning the .blog TLD would appear anti-
competitive?

~~~
duskwuff
It could be worse. Google (DBA "Charleston Road Registry") had a bid in to
purchase .blog and make it only usable for Blogger (= Blogspot) blogs:

> This Google Registry service causes the domain name to be associated with
> the Blogger service, so that DNS for second-level domains (SLD) within the
> TLD will automatically resolve to the relevant Google service. [...] Client-
> initiated updates to the name servers for the domain name will not be
> accepted and the server will respond with an error type 2304 - “Object
> status prohibits operation”.

[https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-
result/applications...](https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-
result/applicationstatus/applicationdetails/527)

~~~
andyfleming
So would WordPress/Automattic be able to limit .blog to only be used for
WordPress sites?

~~~
duskwuff
No. The terms that the TLD was created under ([1]) effectively establish it as
public.

[1]: [https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-
result/applications...](https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-
result/applicationstatus/applicationdetails/1746)

------
FireBeyond
Huh:

"How much will a .blog domain cost?

While not yet finalized, domain registration prices will be in the standard
range for new top-level domains, with some premium pricing for higher-value
names."

No longer 'first come, first served', now "How much you got?". Isn't
registration supposed to be egalitarian?

~~~
deftnerd
I've seen several "new TLD's" do this pricing scheme. Typically they come up
with some kind of pricing algorithm for "premium" domains by seeing if the
word is in the dictionary and how often it's used in everyday language.

Things like "business.blog" will fetch a price that'll likely be in the 4 or 5
figures a year for the registrant.

~~~
qyv
This makes sense to me. Some domain names are worth more than others.
gaming.blog will probably have a lot of value, while ilikegrasshoppers.blog is
not worth very much. I see no reason why these things should be assigned the
same arbitrary value when it is clear their values are not equal.

~~~
dingaling
> gaming.blog will probably have a lot of value

I'm not sure about that; many everyday users I know are now wary of 'general'
domain names and see them as spammy or suspicious.

In the UK B&Q has to remind us that diy.com is actually their retail website
and not some ad-ridden "answer aggregator"

~~~
jkarneges
Elan is a credit card provider in the US, and the domain name for their web
panel is "myaccountaccess.com". This is not as cool as they think.

------
techthroway443
What does it mean they purchased .blog TLD?

Does this mean they bought every single domain that ends in .blog?

~~~
willejs
Effectively yes. Basically, they own the TLD and can sell any domains under
that. So, if you want thechthrowaway.blog, you've got to pay them to purchase
it. In reality, you will probably purchase this from godaddy or similar, but
ultimately they own the namespace and set the price on the cost of the
domains.

~~~
bitJericho
One way to combat this kind of thing is to just not own any domain names whose
tlds are owned by private corporations.

~~~
tobltobs
You prefer state controlled?

~~~
bitJericho
Yes. If one country tld is unacceptable you can use a different one. There's
lots of options.

~~~
tobltobs
Couldn't you apply the same principle to TLDs controlled by private companies?
There are lots of options.

------
flashman
I would assign anything hosted on .blog a _huge_ reputational hit. But the
fact that so much money was put behind it makes me think of two possibilities:

1) Auttomatic has far more money than sense, or 2) I am out of touch with the
way other internet users assign value to domain names.

It's entirely possible that the second one is true. I've been using the
internet for twenty years now, so I really have no idea how meaningful other
people find particular gTLDs.

~~~
adevine
I think that in your head you're comparing this to buying a single domain
name, e.g. playing 19 mil for blog.com or something, but it reality Auttomatic
is really paying to be the registrar for .blog domains. I can imagine a lot of
reasonable people paying $19 a year for a myname.blog website.

~~~
ValentineC
> I can imagine a lot of reasonable people paying $19 a year for a myname.blog
> website.

Why would a reasonable person do that when they can do something similar with
blog.myname.com (and the like)?

I don't know how the new TLDs have been perceived, but I certainly would
prefer a nice sounding myname.com than a website on any of these newfangled
names.

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return0
This also means that automattic can take down your .blog if they don't like
you.

~~~
viraptor
This is true for any TLD. Just instead of Automattic it's either another
company, a country, or some overreaching US agency (FBI took over .com domains
in the past)

~~~
syrrim
Just look at Sweden taking down ThePirateBay.se

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downtide
Wow 19 million for a couple of characters, that are an impish abbreviation of
'web log', for virtual placeholders. Does anyone even use the word blog
anymore? It sounds soo last decade. How very odd. These vanity domains just
don't do it for me, and this is one of the better ones.

~~~
cordite
Should we start other TLDs for .vlog and even .wlog?

~~~
downtide
.diary, .journal, .thoughts, .musings might be a better choice ;).

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phantom_oracle
I recall a while back that based on this new TLD scheme, it was mentioned that
ICANN pocketed a tidy +USD100M from it.

What ICANN needs this money for, I'm not sure...

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petervandijck
They should send a bottle of wine to Peter Merholz :)
[http://www.peterme.com/archives/00000205.html](http://www.peterme.com/archives/00000205.html)

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gesman
Is it possible to create 2-letter TLD's instead of .mycoolbutreallystupidtld
or just plain .bullshit TLD's?

There are plenty of unused 2-letter TLD combos around, why bother with
.blahblah ?

~~~
kijeda
All unused two letter combinations are reserved for country-code top-level
domains. This is to ensure future countries have the ability to have their own
TLD. New countries are created perhaps more often than you may think, on
average about one per year or two.

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shaqbert
What is wrong with wordpress.com?

Is that the best use of funds?

Why not put at least 1/10th of that money into just providing a sliver of love
to their big breadwinner Wordress VIP?

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chinathrow
Charging more for some domains than others. I am disappointed.

~~~
qyv
Why? What intrinsically makes the value of all domains equal?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Intrinsically they cost less per instance for each new one registered. It's
externalities - like demand, marketability, pronouncability, fashion,
coincidence with trademarks - that allow them to be sold at high prices.

The web has been historically very democratic and ICANN's dicking about with
internet domain names is one of many things that seems to be moving
increasingly away from that ideal.

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wineisfine
Hooray! More Wordpress websites

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ZoF
Heh, I don't know why it's at all surprising but I, for some reason, expected
there to be some kind of restrictions regarding TLD ownership/providership.

I really dislike this, that a single entity owns a TLD when they don't have
any justification for it other than 'we bought it'.

At least 99% of other TLD's are maintained by countries/orgs/etc. who at least
have an arguably justified ownership.

Private entities owning all TLD's here we come.

Here comes the end of any potential anonymity that DNS provided.

~~~
ewindisch
ICANN began the process for this in 2008 and the first gTLDs were sold in, I
think, 2012(?). However, yes, you're right, private entities will end up
owning all of the TLDs and it will put likely startups at a disadvantage to
incumbents as they become more common.

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beedogs
Neat: a new way to waste 19 million dollars. Silicon Valley just keeps
innovating.

