Amazon.com has won the right to operate the .book top-level domain name in a private auction, according to reports from a number of technology news sites.
Amazon’s winning bid will give it the right to sell Internet domain names that end in the suffix .book. While the prices paid in private generic top-level domain (TLD) auctions are generally not revealed, Amazon is reported to have made a winning bid of about $10 million. Amazon won the right to operate the .book TLD in an auction that at one point included Google and R. R. Bowker, though many of the bidders, including those two, eventually withdrew.
The private auctions were organized by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the nonprofit organization that governs the Internet naming system. The new generic TLD strings (including .buy which Amazon also won) were introduced by ICANN in an effort to address a maxed out marketplace for .com names. ICANN hopes to foster increased commercial activity in the Internet name marketplace.
Amazon won the auction despite a filing by the Association of American Publishers in 2013 that opposed its bid, and described the possible control of the .book TLD by the retailer, or by any private company, to be counter to the public interest.
