Nu Dot Co Revealed as Winner of $135 Million .web gLTD Auction
ICANN confirmed Thursday that domain registry Nu Dot Co made the $135 million winning bid (see 1607280057) for registry rights to the .web generic top-level domain (gTLD). Nu Dot Co beat domain registry Donuts, Google and five other bidders for…
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.web through 23 rounds of bidding, ICANN said in a results report. Vistaprint Limited won rights to the .webs gTLD for $1, ICANN said. Nu Dot Co was the subject of controversy ahead of the .web auction, as Donuts claimed in a lawsuit that ICANN was negligent and in breach of contract for not sufficiently investigating whether Nu Dot Co was under partial control by a major entity along with stated parent company Straat Investments. The U.S. District Court in Los Angeles denied Donuts' request for a temporary restraining order to delay the .web auction but is still considering the underlying lawsuit (see 1607250051 and 1607270027). Nu Dot Co's winning bid for .web only deepens speculation about the registry's ownership status, with particular attention now focused on whether .com registry Verisign is involved with Nu Dot Co, a domain names industry executive told us. Verisign didn't directly mention .web in its Q2 earnings report Thursday or a conference call with investors, but the registry said in an SEC filing it had “incurred a commitment to pay approximately $130.0 million for the future assignment of contractual rights, which are subject to third-party consent.” Verisign didn't comment.