In a public auction, Google paid a little over $25 million for the rights to use and have the TLD .app.
This is one of the highest purchase for a top-level domain in an ICANN auction, more than a triple of the previous record price which was held by Dot Tech LLC and its $6.8 million winning for the rights to .tech.
"The mission of the proposed gTLD, .app, is to provide a dedicated domain space for application developers. The term 'app' is associated with a wide variety of applications, including mobile applications, web- and browser-based applications, cloud-hosted applications and even desktop applications," wrote the top-level domain application from Charleston Road Registry, Google's registry services company.
"Charleston Road Registry expects uses of the gTLD will include a wide variety of uses across all of these types of applications, not limited to any specific platform or provider. The proposed gTLD will enhance consumer choice by providing new availability in the second-level domain space in which application developers can deliver new content and offerings. It also creates new layers of organization on the Internet and signals the kind of content available in the domain."
When acquiring the rights for the TLD, Google didn't reveal its plan on what to do with it. But from Google's application and its existing correspondence with ICANN, Google is allowing the domain to stay platform-neutral.
"We intend for the .app TLD to be restricted for use by relevant developer communities, but to be inclusive of the full range of application development communities and not to restrict registration to developers on a particular platform," said a 2013 letter from Charleston Road Registry to ICANN.