.Ping Was Auctioned Today For $1,501,000 & .SRL For $400,000 (Google lost again)

Today, 25 March 2015, Power Auctions LLC, ICANN‘s authorized auction service provider, conducted a New gTLD Program Auction to resolve string contention for two new generic top-level domain (gTLD) strings: .PING and .SRL.

Applicants for each string were unable to resolve contention among themselves; thus their contention set proceeded to auction, which is the method of last resort to resolve string contention as prescribed in Module 4 of the New gTLD Program Applicant Guidebook. Subject to payment of the winning price and meeting all other criteria for eligibility, the winner will enter ICANN‘s contracting process to sign a Registry Agreement to operate the gTLD.

Two applicants participated in the auction for PING. Ping Registry Provider, Inc. prevailed with a winning price of $1,501,000. The loosing applicant was the Radix registry.

Two applicants participated in the auction for SRL. mySRL GmbH prevailed with a winning price of $400,000. The loosing applicant was Google.

All proceeds from the Auction are being segregated and withheld from use until ICANN‘s Board of Directors define a plan for an appropriate use of the funds through consultation with the community.

More Information

• Contention Set Status: 197 of 233 contention sets are now resolved. The majority have self-resolved, but 13 sets resolved via Auction (method of last resort).
• Auction Results: Auction reports on this page of the New gTLD Microsite provide additional information on each Auction outcome.
• Auction Proceeds and Costs: A detailed summary of the proceeds and costs of each Auction through February 2015. This information will be updated to within 7 days of each Auction.
• Auction Schedule [PDF, 251 KB]: Subsequent auctions are scheduled to occur on a monthly basis through mid-2015.
• General New gTLD Program Auctions information.