Amazon has shelled out a hefty $4.6 million for the .buy generic top-level domain (TLD), outbidding rival Google and other tech companies in the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) auction.
The Domain Name Wire reports that the .buy TLD was demanded by 4 applicants – Amazon, Bitter Sunset, LLC, Charleston Road Registry Inc. (Google’s registry service), dot Buy Limited, and the online retailer giant with a bid of $4,588,888 has won out. Notably, only 2 bidders out of the 4 went in with a bid of over $1.5 million.
Although Amazon has beat Google into bagging the .buy TLD, the retailer is yet to reveal its plans. However, Amazon as well as Google hasn’t yet commented on the report.
But, it seems like Google has had a tough path down the other bids including .tech and .vip also. The search engine giant was likely looking forward to snap up the .vip domain name, while the Ireland-based domain reseller – Minds+Machines bought it for $3,000,888, beating the other 4 applicants – Charleston Road Registry Inc., I-Registry Ltd., John Corner, and VIP Registry Pte Ltd.
In the case of .tech domain, a company called Dot Tech has outbid the other 5 applicants – Charleston Road Registry Inc., Lone Moon, NU DOT CO, Minds+Machines and Uniregistry, Corp., with its bid of $6,760,000. Apparently 3 bidders bid at least up to $6.2 million for the domain name.
The auction follows the several regional domains rollout. ICANN is also expected to rollout a wide range of new domains by the end of 2014.
