Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the non-profit organization responsible for the internet’s domain name system has sold .web domain at an auction for $135 million, breaking the record for the highest price paid for an internet top-level domain name.
The amount bid by Nu Dot Co for .web was three times higher than the previous record of $41.5 million paid for the .shop top-level domain when it was sold at auction in January this year. Google, which paid $25 million for .app in February 2015, was one of seven other companies that participated in the auction for the .web top-level domain.
Nu Dot Co will now have the right to sell domain names ending in .web, but it is not known whether it intends to do this or when .web domains may go on sale. Nu Dot Co was founded by Juan Diego Calle, the entrepreneur behind the .co top-level domain. .web is the 16th top-level domain that has been sold by ICANN). Other domains sold in the last two years include .baby, .salon, .tech, and .dot, generating a total of $230 million.
