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> We wanted to stay stealth while in the bidding process and afterward in order not to draw too much attention Why, because a major blog host owning the .blog

> We wanted to stay stealth while in the bidding process and afterward in order not to draw too much attention Why, because a major blog host owning the .blog TLD would appear anti-competitive?

elahd 11y ago
Probably to avoid having others enter the auction, driving the price up further.
Artemis2 11y ago
It's not like it's a concern for ICANN, Google owns .search, .ads, .dev, .app and more.
- creeble 11y ago
  .dad and, yes, .foo!
- gberger 11y ago
  .google
duskwuff 11y ago
It could be worse. Google (DBA "Charleston Road Registry") had a bid in to purchase .blog and make it only usable for Blogger (= Blogspot) blogs: > This Google Registry service causes the domain name to be associated with the Blogger service, so that DNS for second-level domains (SLD) within the TLD will automatically resolve to the relevant Google service. [...] Client-initiated updates to the name servers for the domain name will not be accepted and the server will respond with an error type 2304 - “Object status prohibits operation”. https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applicationstatus/applicationdetails/527 https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applications...
- andyfleming 11y ago
  So would WordPress/Automattic be able to limit .blog to only be used for WordPress sites?
  - duskwuff 11y ago
    No. The terms that the TLD was created under ([1]) effectively establish it as public. [1]: https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applicationstatus/applicationdetails/1746 https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applications...
- photomatt 11y ago
  You nailed it. We wanted the TLD to be open, and anyone will be able to use it regardless of whether they use WordPress or not.