When you have at your disposal a huge cash pile of ad dollars, there is pretty much you can do without having to worry a bit. That is exactly what Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) has done, forking out a whopping $25 million to own exclusive rights to top level .app domain extension. Google’s investment is the biggest ever paid to one of the ICANN’s auction so far.
Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) is believed to have fended off stiff competition from 13 other companies who were also eyeing the domain, 12 of whom were still in the running when the ICANN auction was carried yesterday. The giant search network is believed to have shrugged competition from the likes of Amazon in the race to the big win.
Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) will now be able to offer domain names ending in .app, a natural fit for its Google Play service. The company had decided to apply for new top-level domains in 2012 after ICANN an organization that controls world domains decided to expand the overall number of generic TLDs. The search giant had already applied for dozens of domains including .docs, .Android and. Foo.
It is a big win for Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL), having lost last year to Dot Tech LLC, which spent $6.7 million on the domain .tech. ICANN has gradually been auctioning off domains since June 2014 which can be an expensive and competitive process. Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) has also had its fair share of success in the bidding process having won a bid of $5million for .buy domain and .spot for $2.2 million.
It is still not yet clear the plans Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) has for .app although the domain is expected to give the search giant a creative way of promoting apps as search traffic now shifts to mobile. The company is already helping developers promote apps having started testing search ads in the Google Play store.
