GMO Registry wins .shop domain auction from Google and Amazon with record bid

GMO Registry will offer domains that end with the top-level domain .shop. The company paid a record amount of 41.5 million dollars during the auction, converted more than 38.2 million euros. The company managed to beat both Google and Amazon with this.

The Icann, the organization that deals with the distribution of new top-level domains, assigned the domain to GMO Registry on January 27. GMO Registry is a Japanese domain name company and provides a number of gtlds in Asia. GMO states that the domain is intended for participants in the online economy, such as web stores.

The company is opening registration for the .shop domain to owners of an online store or other e-commerce-related business. Registering the domain just to sell or trade it, for example, is considered inappropriate use. To prevent this type of registration, the company will perform random checks, among other things.

GMO Registry had registered for the auction twice, once as a ‘community’ and once as a regular business. Other companies participating included Amazon EU and Google’s Charleston Road Registry. With the bid of $41.5 million, GMO surpasses Google’s previous record. In February 2015, he bought the .app domain for 25 million dollars.