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Amazon Just Paid Nearly $5 Million To Own The Entire '.Buy' Web Domain

James CookSep 18, 2014, 14:16 IST

Flickr / James Duncan DavidsonAmazon CEO Jeff Bezos

Amazon has paid $4.6 million for exclusive use of the .buy domain name, beating Google and other internet giants in a domain auction.

Domain Name Wire reports, via The Next Web, that on Sept. 17, ICANN, the organization that controls the world's domain names, held an auction to sell four hotly contested domains: .buy, .tech, .vip and .?? ("Information" in Mandarin).

Companies looking to buy exclusive use of a new domain have to pledge to pay escalating amounts in order to progress through the rounds of an ICANN auction. Amazon won the right to use the .buy domain name after Google bowed out of the auction.

Google was also hoping to snap up the .vip domain name, but again it was outbid. Ireland-based domain reseller Minds + Machines bought .vip for just over $3 million.

Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.