There’s evidence that Google Registry may have sold a .ing domain name for seven figures during its pre-launch period.
Google is well into its Early Access Period for the new gTLD, which runs for five weeks with premium prices decreasing every week or day until December 5, when they go to general availability pricing.
The EAP was notable for just how premium the first-week prices were — if you really wanted a quality domain hack for your business, it would cost you well north of $1 million.
But as far as I can tell from zone files, just one domain was added during that first week — host.ing, which has a Whois creation date of November 6, well within the cut-off for the seven-figure price tag.
The domain does not resolve and Whois currently shows Google itself as the registrant and Google’s go-to registrar, Markmonitor, as the registrar.
So it may be a self-reg, but waiting until EAP to grab a name in-house when Google has had literally years to do so does seem unusual.
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