More than a handful of people have told me they are looking forward to registering a .App name and wondered where they would be priced ? Google just won the rights to the extension for $25,000,001 as has been reported everywhere on the Internet, some sites actually reporting it today likes it is hot off the presses.
The purchase price is noting really for Google who made $14 billion last year, the company spent 1.65 billion on You Tube, the company which was founded 10 years ago, and was purchased by Google in October of 2006 is still not profitable. Eric Schmidt once said under oath that he valued You Tube at $600m to $700m but had no problem in paying a one billion dollar premium, he felt if they did not overpay, Microsoft or Yahoo would.
The real question about the $25 million purchase is how limited the pool of possible registrants will be. Those handful of people who told me they can’t wait to register a .app domain will not be allowed to register one. None of them are application developers.
Google is planning to make registrars do a lot of work according to their application, it makes me wonder if most will pass on offering .App domains and that Google will use its own registrar for the bulk of .app regs. Google will be implementing monitoring and periodic audits. Unless they change course it looks like this is going to be a highly scrutinized extension.
From the application:
Charleston Road Registry believes that the .app gTLD will best add value to the gTLD space by limiting registration to only application developers. Charleston Road Registry plans to require registrars to confirm that a domain applicant is an application developer via an established process. If the domain applicant passes the eligibility verification process, only then will the applicant be eligible to apply for a second-level domain in the .app gTLD. To preserve the integrity of the gTLD, Charleston Road Registry reserves the right to adopt certain monitoring measures, including periodic audits. Charleston Road Registry also reserves the right to adopt enforcement measures, including a request that registrars facilitate a user reporting method to log complaints and⁄or potential instances of misuse within the gTLD. If a registrant is found to be in violation of the terms of the registry-registrar agreement or the registrar-registrant agreement, Charleston Road Registry may request that the appropriate registrar enforce such agreements through penalties, including but not limited to suspension of the domain name.
To the point I made about extra work for the registrar, it looks like Google plans on being the only registrar:
Charleston Road Registry will strive to ensure the appropriate level of privacy and security will be met for its users. Although Google will be the only registrant (and is intended to serve as the only registrar for the gTLD as well), Charleston Road Registry and its provider of registry services, Google, have imposed measures to achieve this protection for their users; additional specifics regarding the practices for the registry include but are not limited to the following:
Ray, is there a definition of “application”. Most people use the term app to mean a native application for a mobile device, but in reality the term can be extremely broad.
I agree and you make a good point but I wonder if they will see it as iOS and Android developers only.
I was one of those people so thanks for this. So Google is going to be the only registrar for the.app extension ?