Dot Web Sold for $135 Million to Verisign or Google?

[betthelot]

Oh my God $135million, has to be google or verisign (through the back door) brought it. They are the only ones to have the infrastructure to squeeze that amount of value out of .web
How the hell are you going to get a return on that investment. The truth is end users are not interested in all these new gTLDs and businesses that aren't mom and pop or start ups are shunning them.
It appears its vanity which is driving the purchase of .web not business sense.
Crazy I own Electronics.web and leaking emails, business to ElectronicsWeb.com.
The domain world has gone mad in the belief there is a second coming a new mountain to mine.
Its an illusion and the last 2 years have proved that.

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Updates:

• ICANN announces .web auction results
• Verisign confirms it did fund $135 million .web bid

 

[Name Trader]

My view - if none of the new TLDs had ever been released and .WEB was released / promoted sort of like .CO, I believe .WEB could have been rather popular among investors, startups and small businesses as a cheap alternative when .COM and .Net were already taken. At this point though, we have 20 million plus new TLDs that did not exist a few years ago and more than 90% of those are investors. How much money has been spent between initial registration and one or two renewals on 20 million domains (some with premiums)? Most reported new TLD sales are registry sales - not domainer sales. So how much more speculative money is still on the sidelines for another TLD which still has not been released? Will those who loaded up on .XYZ, .TOP, .CLUB etc still go for .WEB? What happens to the registration base of these other TLDs if they do decide to invest in .WEB as well?

In any city there are only so many people looking to rent an apartment or buy a home or condo. If investors build a hundred times more properties than people need to live, there will be a massive number of vacancies. Investors will be unable to find buyers as real estate demand stems from people looking for a place to live.

Ultimately end users are needed to justify investments in domain names. There just are not enough end users willing to pay a premium price for unknown extensions to justify these massive registration volumes.

I would bet at a large amount of those 20M registrations are held by the registrars themselves as premiums.

It's hard enough selling a .com to an end user for more than regfee

 

[GoKaizen]

Ahhh soo true.

It's hard enough selling a .com to an end user for more than regfee

 

[pfj]

Verisign had to get this whatever the cost, to stop competitors getting hold of it - and, truly, Verisign is probably the only company that can TRULY monetize it effectively.

How will they recover their $135m?

Simple - they can extort existing .com owners (they probably call it leverage though...)

"Hey, we see you have example.com - you should secure example.web which Verisign has acquired, to help to protect the rights of existing domain name owners! Did you know that .web is the newest web address out there, and sure to be a hugely powerful marketing tool? No? Well, it is! So we can give you preferential pricing of $25 per year right now for the .web address that matches your .com address, or we can release it to the market, diluting the power of your existing name. Insure against someone else getting it by securing it today!"

If only 10% of the current .com owners go for this wheeze, then they've doubled their money straight away - and have recurring income of as much as $300m a year.

 

[Kate]

"Hey, we see you have example.com - you should secure example.web which Verisign has acquired, to help to protect the rights of existing domain name owners! Did you know that .web is the newest web address out there, and sure to be a hugely powerful marketing tool? No? Well, it is! So we can give you preferential pricing of $25 per year right now for the .web address that matches your .com address, or we can release it to the market, diluting the power of your existing name. Insure against someone else getting it by securing it today!"

Is that even allowed ? I don't think so. New extensions are independent strings, they are not tied to .com. There is no justification for giving .com holders preferential treatment.

 

[Embrand]

Verisign had to get this whatever the cost, to stop competitors getting hold of it - and, truly, Verisign is probably the only company that can TRULY monetize it effectively.

How will they recover their $135m?

Simple - they can extort existing .com owners (they probably call it leverage though...)

"Hey, we see you have example.com - you should secure example.web which Verisign has acquired, to help to protect the rights of existing domain name owners! Did you know that .web is the newest web address out there, and sure to be a hugely powerful marketing tool? No? Well, it is! So we can give you preferential pricing of $25 per year right now for the .web address that matches your .com address, or we can release it to the market, diluting the power of your existing name. Insure against someone else getting it by securing it today!"

If only 10% of the current .com owners go for this wheeze, then they've doubled their money straight away - and have recurring income of as much as $300m a year.

Network Solutions gave out .xyz to match your .coms registered with them without even asking. Maybe they will do the same with .web if web.com is the buyer?

 

[Winfluence]

This was probably mostly a move to defend dot com and dot net, because whoever buys it *could* eventually become a relevant competitor after a decade. But to be honest, I don't even think it will out reg dot org. Still has *huge* potential anyway.

 

[jmcc]

Is that even allowed ? I don't think so. New extensions are independent strings, they are not tied to .com. There is no justification for giving .com holders preferential treatment.

Moral justification perhaps but there is a very good business case for offering a prior rights arrangement similar to that which Nominet offered for .UK registrations to existing .*.uk holders. That would really shake things up and effectively stomp all over the existing new gTLDs. It would probably open the registry to various legal challenges.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Name Trader]

Did you see that in the ICANN auction results announcement.

.web sold to Nu Dot Co for $135M three times the previous highest price for a New GTLD auction.
.webs sold to Vistaprint for $1 the lowest price anyone could pay for an auction

 

[jmcc]

Did you see that in the ICANN auction results announcement.

.web sold to Nu Dot Co for $135M three times the previous highest price for a New GTLD auction.
.webs sold to Vistaprint for $1 the lowest price anyone could pay for an auction

Typical ICANN. Even taking the sucker's last Dollar.

Regards...jmcc

 

[GoKaizen]

https://namestat.org/comsec

Vericrap

 

[Chris Rice]

Don't do what you did with .TV and kill it before its started, go for mass adoption, at least one new gTLD try this strange model.

.XYZ started off with that model.

 

[GoKaizen]

http://domainincite.com/20833-verisign-confirms-it-did-fund-135-million-web-bid

 

[GoKaizen]

http://domainative.com/verisign-statement-regarding-web-auction-results/