Google is buying the entire '.app' domain for a Whopping $25M | Hacker News Reader

Google is buying the entire '.app' domain for a Whopping $25M

dridgag.com

64 pointsmascot669962 comments

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...

"Weary" as in tired of seeing them? Or "Wary" as in "Not sure I want to click on that link"?

> "Weary" as in tired of seeing them? Or "Wary" as in "Not sure I want to click on that link"?

Both?

Ok, I can see that. Some days, I feel the same way. "Oh jeeze, not those guys again!"

.info and .biz have both been around for 14 years, so they're not exactly just starting to show up.

I think that's what they're saying: those two have been around for ages and they're still seen as sketchy, so the newer, weirder ones are even more off-putting by comparison.

A lot of that may have to do with all the infomercials that used .biz and .info. Country specific tlds have been doing fine. A company with the marketing resources to brand their tld could do well here.

> A lot of that may have to do with all the infomercials that used .biz and .info.

Maybe true, but things like .academy just reek of potential scammers/fly-by-night operations that could not qualify for a real .edu.

Things like .lawyer also feel more inclined towards "ambulance chasers" rather than real law offices with money to get the .com they wanted.

> Things like .lawyer also feel more inclined towards "ambulance chasers" rather than real law offices with money to get the .com they wanted.

I dunno, I think lots of real law firms will prefer, as one example, the new .llc or .llp domains (which Google applied for, don't think they've been awarded yet) to .com; having your domain name being more exactly your business name has value.

It depends on the context. Info and biz have crappy associations with fly by night companies. Imagine this:

facebook.app -> redirects to proper app in Google/Apple app store. (Since the stores have horrible search experiences.)

amazon.app

zillow.app

instagram.app

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?

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

There is also .black.

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

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

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

pokemon.red and pokemon.blue are literally the only uses I can come up with for those tld.

http://im.blue/dabadeedabadie

"La red" is Spanish for "the web", as in the internet.

Red is also a very symbolic and emotion-invoking color. It could be used in many contexts.

At least this has enabled some regional TLDs to finally be approved that should've been years ago (.scot, .wales/.cymru, etc.).

"How does a single company go about buying an entire TLD? Doesn't seem very "forward looking" for ICANN."

Was part of the process from the start actually. Been discussed for years and years.

I wonder how long it'll take for the general public to actually recognise those as valid things they can type into their browser.

There was a sports event on TV recently and you could see a billboard ad in the background for a while with <location>.travel as main focus/ text on it, can't remember the exact one.

I asked my sister - who is fairly adept in basic pc use - if she knew that this was a URL. She didn't and replied "without .at? or .com? That's confusing."

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

And before someone says you're wrong: if it wasn't a scam and if it was a genuine effort to expand the available domain name space, those would be different domain names, rolled out in a different manner, in a different time frame.

What they are doing is perfect for driving up prices through hype and corporate anxiety. It benefits squatters more than anyone else. I am not even sure this benefits large corporations. But public at large - definitely not. What is the public benefit of having somename.app instead of somename.app.com? Does it justify $25M pricetag?

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.

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

.apps, plural.

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

Systems where new resources can be created out of thin air for a relatively low cost are eminently corruptible. It's a license to print money.

"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.

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

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.

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

Like I said, best of a bad world.

> 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).

Source? I can find a list of all the gTLDs they applied for, I can find partial lists (which don't include .app) of ones they plan to allow registration on, and I can find partial lists (which also don't include .app) of ones they plan to use for Google products.

The official news was released a long time ago http://googleblog.blogspot.in/2012/05/expanding-internet-dom...

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.

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

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?

Google is buying the TLD, not all the subdomains under it. They will then have control over the namespacing for the TLD and be able to distribute subdomains as they see fit. This is how most TLDs work because "app" itself is a domain, not just an extension.

> 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.

This process isn't for individual domains. They're bidding to own(?)/run/operate the entire TLD. Similar to how, eg, the entire .uk ccTLD is administered by Nominet.

So they're not buying "every .app domain". They're buying (the rights to?) the administer the entire TLD.

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

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

http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/customer-service/faq...

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?

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.

I think the minimum price for setting up a TLD is tens of thousands of dollars

Almost $200k, actually, and that's just the fee to present the request; you'll still have to have the infrastructure to actually run the root DNS servers for your TLD(s).

You mean 2 x $5 VPS won't be enough?

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?

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)

$185,000 just to apply. If multiple parties applied, the gltd gets sent to auction.

https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applications...

No, nobody was squatting .app. Icann auctioned it, google won the auction.

ah, makes sense. (parent explicitly said "TLD squatters. Same exact problem as before, just more expensive.") obviously doubt Google qualifies as a squatter.

Yeah, I don't know what the parent is on about, they're completely wrong. Nobody is squatting TLDs, all the new ones have gone to orgs actively working as registrars.

> Who actually are they buying this from? ICANN?

Yes. ICANN is auctioning the new gTLDs, and Google won the auction for .app.

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

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).

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

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.

"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).

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?

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

Feels like a monopoly...

Google owns the open web.

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