A fight that started with a $135 million auction bid in 2016 finally ended on July 22, when Verisign announced that .web had been delegated to the internet’s root zone, with Verisign as the operator. The company summed up a decade of litigation in a single line, saying the delegation followed “the successful resolution of all previous disputes,” details of which remain confidential.
The backstory explains why this took so long. Back in 2012, .web was one of the most contested domain extensions in ICANN‘s history, with seven applicants fighting over it, including Google. Unable to reach an agreement, the applicants went to a last-resort auction in 2016, where a little-known bidder called Nu Dot Co won with a $135 million bid, the highest any new domain had ever fetched.
Days later, a Verisign securities filing revealed the twist: Verisign had quietly funded that winning bid all along. Losing applicant Afilias fought back through ICANN’s review process, and a panel found ICANN had breached its own rules by never formally ruling on whether the arrangement violated auction terms. ICANN’s board finally cleared Verisign’s path in 2023, though objections dragged on for another year before this week’s resolution.
Here’s where it gets interesting for Verisign’s business. The company’s dominant .com domain operates under a decades-old Cooperative Agreement with the US Commerce Department, which caps wholesale price increases at 7 percent a year. That cap doesn’t apply to .web, or to any domain created in ICANN’s 2012 round. Verisign confirmed as much directly, stating .web won’t fall under the same government agreement governing .com. That gives the company something new: a strong, familiar-sounding domain it can price however the market allows, including premium fees for the most desirable names, something its .com and .net contracts explicitly prohibit.
Verisign landed this win from a position of real strength. Its second quarter brought a record 12.7 million new .com and .net registrations, pushing its overall base to 179.1 million names and revenue up 6 percent to $435 million. Still, CEO Jim Bidzos and the company both flagged an open question worth watching: new registrations don’t always translate into renewals, and Verisign’s own numbers show first-year domains renew at a far lower rate than established ones.
Verisign doesn’t expect meaningful .web revenue this year. Sales through channel partners begin later in 2026, with general availability expected around year’s end.
