Company Nu Dot Co Pays $135 Million for .web Top-Level Domain

The company Nu Dot Co has paid 135 million dollars, or about 121 million euros, to acquire the .web top-level domain. This happened in an auction organized by Icann, the organization responsible for top-level domains.

This sets a new record, after the sale of the .shop TLD in February of this year for $ 41.5 million. In addition to the winning company, seven other companies bid on the domain, Icann reports. These included Google, Donuts, Web.com, Radix and Afilias, according to The Register. By winning the auction, Nu Dot Co can sell domain names within the .web-tld to third parties.

It is unclear who is behind the winning company, writes The Register. Several rumors would suggest that it is a shell company of VeriSign. For example, this company also owns the .com and .net domains. This would be supported by the fact that VeriSign had set aside $130 million for “granting future rights” when the figures were released.

Donuts, one of the companies in the race for the .web TLD, tried to delay the process because certain aspects of Nu Dot Co’s application were not correct. However, the company’s objections were rejected by Icann.