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Decision on $135 million .web auction expected in weeks

Kevin Murphy, April 22, 2021, 20:45:20 (UTC), Domain Registries

ICANN, Verisign, Donuts, and the other applicants for .web will find out who gets to control the fiercely contested gTLD by the first week of June at the latest, according to Verisign’s CEO.

Jim Bidzos told analysts tonight that the Independent Review Process panel currently handling a complaint filed by Afilias declared its case closed April 7, and said that a decision will come within 60 days.

Afilias, now owned by Donuts, came second in an ICANN “auction of last resort” in which a Verisign-backed company called Nu Dot Co agreed to pay $135 million for the coveted string.

Afilias wants the auction declared invalid because ICANN, it claims, did not sufficiently pursue allegations that NDC was being secretly bankrolled by Verisign, which it says broke ICANN bylaws and new gTLD application rules.

This is denied by ICANN, as well as NDC and Verisign, which have filed legal documents with the IRP panel despite not being parties.

Afilias and others suspect that Verisign wants .web in order to bury it, keeping what could be a strong .com competitor weak, which Verisign also denies.

The IRP panel held a seven-day virtual hearing last August, but has continued to receive briefs from ICANN and Afilias since then.

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Comments (1)

  1. Snoopy says:

    “Afilias and others suspect that Verisign wants .web in order to bury it, keeping what could be a strong .com competitor weak, which Verisign also denies.”

    //////////////////////////////

    This is not correct, whilst they want it partly for defensive reasons they won’t deliberately bury it.

    But instead they will just run it like all their other extensions, which is to invest nearly nothing into marketing and let the cash roll in. It will be like .net/.tv/.com in terms of nothing much being done.

    Not say that is the right or wrong strategy but that is how Verisign run tlds.

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