A bid that topped $25 million has helped Google Inc. win the .app website domain name, keeping it from Amazon.com Inc. and other organizations, according to documents from the International Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers. The new domain name could help Google increase its ties with developers of web applications.
The nonprofit group, commonly called ICANN, manages the names and numbers of web addresses worldwide, and in 2013 began began approving applications for ownership of new web domain names. The new generic top-level domain (gTLD) names, or the strings of letters following the “dot” in a web address, like “dot-com,” can help retailers and other e-commerce operators buy web addresses that reflect their activities. Organizations have already bid for such domain names as .baby and .salon; in fact, .baby was bought by pharmaceutical and consumer goods giant Johnson & Johnson for just more than $3 million in December.
That pales in comparison with the .app purchase price, the highest by far of 11 domain name prices listed by ICANN. Setting aside the winning bid for .app, the range goes from $600,000 to $6.76 million for the .tech domain name, submitted by Dot Tech LLC in September.
On Feb. 25, Google, through its Charleston Road Registry Inc. offshoot, won the .app domain with a bid of $25,001,000, according to ICANN documents. The bidding lasted 13 rounds and involved 12 applicants, including Amazon EU S.á r.l., which is part of the e-retailer’s European operations. The ICANN documents don’t detail the other bids by company name, but by the last round of bidding, Google faced off against one other unknown company after bidding topped $24.3 million. Other organizations that bid on .app include Dot App Ltd., a domain-purchasing venture based in California and Ukraine; and Top Level Domain Holdings Ltd., a similar company based in the British Virgin Islands.
It’s unclear what Google will use the domain name for. “They probably want to build a new “standard” for apps,” says Scot Wingo, a longtime e-commerce observer who is CEO of ChannelAdvisor Corp., which helps retailers sell via online marketplaces operated by Amazon, eBay, Google and others. “For example, I go to google.com or nytimes.com for a website and google.app, nytimes.app for apps.” As for direct e-commerce, he offers Wal-Mart as an example of what Google might be planning, adding that while Walmart.com would represent the chain’s e-commerce front door, “the walmart.app site would prompt or autostart install via (the Google Play) store.”
According to the Google application, the domain name will “allow application developers to manage the domain name space for their application offerings. … This specialized domain name space provides a mechanism by which application developers can easily link and manage their applications and related services. This specialization makes it clear to Internet users that this is the authoritative and designated space where they can find applications and information about developers accessible via differentiated and streamlined web addresses.”
Similar language comes from Oleksandr Kosovan, the founder of MacPaw Inc., the parent of losing bidder Dot App. “As software developers we have often faced the problem of domain availability for our new ideas and products,” he writes in a web posting. “Finding a .com or even a .net domain to match an app’s name is usually a long and painful process. Often, a great domain for an app will be taken, or worse, captured by cyber squatters. A great app name is short, clear and to the point. Our goal is to create a dedicated namespace for application publishers and developers that will be free from useless, unrelated and harmful web sites. As a result, an .app domain might become a de facto standard for the industry.”
A Google spokesman declined to further describe Google’s plans for the .app domain name, but offered a comment with a touch of how Dr. Seuss might have handled e-commerce media relations: “We’ve been excited and curious about the potential for new TLDs for .soy long,” the spokesman says. “We are very .app-y with .how, at a .minna-mum, they have the potential to .foo-ward internet innovation.”
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