Verisign finally gets .web, plans to launch domain this year
A decade is a long time to wait for a string of characters.
Verisign paid $135 million for .web in 2016. That is not a domain purchase. That is a bet on the future of the address bar.
The drawn-out dispute was not about technology. It was about who gets to rent the most valuable real estate on the internet: the part to the right of the dot.
Nu Dot Co applied for .web years earlier. Verisign had the auction money. ICANN had the unenviable job of deciding which form of leverage mattered more.
Now the answer is in. Verisign runs the registry. Every registrar on earth will eventually be selling .web domains at retail, and every one of them will be paying Verisign wholesale.
The launch this year is the moment the bet converts to cash flow. Premium names will be reserved or auctioned. The long tail will be sold at standard registry fees, which Verisign sets.
The quiet truth: Verisign does not need .web to be popular. It needs .web to exist. Registrars are required to offer new TLDs. The marginal cost of carrying .web is near zero. The marginal revenue is not.
A $135 million check, ten years of patience, and a permanent toll booth on a piece of the internet that did not previously exist. The math, as they say, works out.
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