Automattic, a company known for its contributions to the open-source WordPress.org project, has announced that it will soon begin to sell domains with the .blog gTLD (generic top-level domain).
The firm acquired the rights to the gTLD back in 2015, although at the time, no one knew who bought it. It appeared to be someone living in Panama. In the end, a man known as Gerardo Aristizabal, along with his company, Primer Nivel, was discovered as the mystery buyer. A whopping $20 million was paid for the gTLD, beating bids from large firms such as Google, Afilias and Donuts; this made it the most expensive gTLD, with .tech coming in at $6.8 million. Primer Nivel was set-up to quietly apply for the rights to multiple generic top-level domains, including: .blog, .legal and .news.
Pricing for the gTLD is not yet known, although the company states that it will be "in the standard range for new top-level domains". Higher-value names will also have premium pricing, although it is not yet known what constitutes a higher-value name. Owners of trademarks will be able to have first dibs on their domains, during the "sunrise" phase. Following that, the "landrush" phase will give people a chance to apply to register a domain before general availability.
Your website won't need to be a blog in order to use the gTLD.
Whilst the new top-level domain is not currently available, it is expected to be available soon. If you're interested in registering a domain, you can sign-up to be notified when it is available here.
Source: WordPress.com via VentureBeat
