Verisign probed by US Dept of Justice over $135m .web auction

[accurate]

The US Department of Justice is digging into the highly unusual auction of internet extension .web last year, the company that purchased it has admitted.

Speaking on Verisign's quarterly earnings conference call on Thursday, CEO Jim Bidzos told investors that on January 18 the registry had received a civil investigative demand (CID) from the antitrust division of the DoJ "requesting certain information relating to Verisign's potential operation of the .web gTLD."

He refused to give any more information beyond saying the company had already handed over some info and was cooperating with the DoJ going forward. Anything beyond that, he claimed, would be speculation. Asked about the CID, he did however make the point that, in his view, the "industry is extremely competitive."

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/10/doj_investigating_auction_of_dot_web/

 

[Commerce]

Looks like there could be 135 Million reasons why an investigation might make sense. Even so, the article indicated that at that price point the TLD would never make money. But with well over 300 million TLD domains registered, if only 20 million names got registered under the .web name, wouldn't that be enough to more than cover that nut in just the first year? After all, as VeriSign competitors claim, it really is a powerful name to compete with the .com TLD.

This one should be interesting to watch.

 

[accurate]

They don't care about making money, on .WEB. It's a play so competition doesn't have it.