Amazon Beats Google, Pays $4.6 Million For .Buy Top-Level Domain

Amazon beat Google in an ICANN auction on Wednesday, and won the rights to operate the .buy top-level domain with a bid of $4,588,888.

ICANN reports that there were four bidders for .buy — Amazon, Google (via its Charleston Road Registry subsidiary), Dot Buy and Bitter Sunset. Only Amazon and Google bid more than $1.5 million to operate the new gTLD.

ICANN calls these “string contention” auctions, and describes the process this way:

String contention occurs when more than one applicant has applied for the same or a confusingly similar gTLD. The applicants for these strings were unable to resolve the contention sets among themselves, and thus proceeded to an auction, which is the method of last resort to resolve string contention sets as prescribed in Module 4 of the Applicant Guidebook. Subject to payment of the Winning Price and meeting all other criteria for eligibility, the winner will begin the contracting process to sign a Registry Agreement to operate the respective gTLD.

ICANN also conducted auctions for two other new TLDs on Wednesday, with .tech going for $6,760,000 to Dot Tech and .vip going for $3,000,888 to a company called Top Level Domain Holdings. Google was a loser in both of those auctions, too.

(Tip via Domain Name Wire.)