“NU DOT CO LLC prevailed in the auction for the price of $135 million to operate the .WEB gTLD,” announced ICANN today confirming earlier unofficial reports suggesting the amount: “On 27 July 2016, Power Auctions LLC, ICANN’s authorized auction service provider, conducted a New Generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) Program auction to resolve contention for .WEB and .WEBS. ... Eight applicants completed the requirements for participating in the .WEB/.WEBS auction. NU DOT CO LLC prevailed in the auction for the price of $135 million to operate the .WEB gTLD.”

— “It looks like Verisign bought .Web domain for $135 million,” reported Andrew Allemann earlier today: “Based on an SEC filing this afternoon, it looks like Nu Dot Co was the winner of today’s .web auction and Verisign is behind the bid.”

— “This is three times the previous record of $45m for .shop, and seven times the average auction price for top-level domains,” Kieren McCarthy writes in The Register. “The massive price tag has raised eyebrows in the domain name industry, not least because one of the companies taking part in the bidding last week sued the non-profit running it, ICANN, in an effort to prevent the auction from going ahead.”

— “Putting the money to (good) use” - Stéphane Van Gelder writes in CircleID: “The real question now is what ICANN should do with these vast auction proceeds? Many times, the organisation has proven woefully inept at money management. Currently, the ICANN community is reeling from the discovery that an ICANN group, put in charge of coming up with a workable plan to transition control of the Internet away from the US government, was allowed to run free and spend millions in legal fees alone.”

— Proceeds from New gTLD Program now total more than $230 million. “A community-based drafting team is currently working on a charter for a Cross-Community Working Group that will create recommendations for Board consideration,” says ICANN.