Auction Of Live gTLD Beginning Of Domain Name Shakeup?

Registry giant Donuts Inc. have made history as they have acquired the “.reise” top-level domain name, the first to be sold with live websites attached to it.

The Register out of the United Kingdom reports that Donuts purchased “.reise” — which is German for “travel” — at an auction. How much they paid is unknown but bidding started at $400,000 and there were four bidders in the process.

Donuts already runs the “.reisen” registry, which is reportedly the main reason why the owner decided to sell it.

The Register expounds on the purchase by detailing the changing market and looking ahead at the future of domains at this link.

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Zlatan’s Spin: The expansion of gTLDs continues; in the past six months, more than 500 new gTLDs have been added, with a further 500 expected in the next six months. Donuts — like our friends at Google — have been very aggressive and actually submitted more than double the amount of applications (307 to Google’s 101).

It appears the market will consolidate into a number of very large registry operators with a second tier of small operators who manage to find a profitable niche. As The Register astutely points out, the impact of moving to a more fluid market for TLDs must be considered. What will happen to the price of of domain renewals?

ICANN doesn’t seem to fully understand what they have done to the market — which they control — as they do not have a single economist on staff. The Register expects outcries for appropriate market controls to be placed on the domain name system.