Amazon has apparently participated in its 1st new gTLD private auction losing .Group to Donuts.
There were 5 applicants for the new gTLD .Group
Amazon (AMZN)
Donuts
Top Level Design, LLC (Raymond King .Wiki & .ink)
Straat.co (related to former owner of the .Co Registry)
Tucows.com (TCX)
All applications other than Donuts application for .Group have been withdrawn from ICANN’s site.
I haven’t seen any announcements from the two public companies in this auction or from anyone else.
I believe with 5 applicants this maybe the largest contention set to be resolved by a private auction.
As far as I know it is also the first private auction for both Amazon and Straat.
Although some in the community believed that Amazon and/or Google would win every auction they were in be it a private auction or the ICANN last Resort auction, I have long held the opinion that Amazon and Google are not going to pay an unlimited amount for each of the strings they applied for and that they would, like other large applicants, wind up getting outbid on some strings.
That appears to be the case with .Group
