A domain auction has seen a company pay a record breaking $135m for .web

The race to own the  .web domain saw shell out a huge $135 million for rights to use the suffix.

Company Nu Dot Co outbid tech giants like Google, as well as net registry firms like Radix and Donuts, to now be the sole provider of .web domains.

The $135 million price tag is nearly three times as much as the price paid for the previous most costly domain suffix, shop, which went for $41.5 million.

The sale of the .web domain has not been a smooth one, with the process starting back in 2012. The four year run up to the sale of the domain suffix was due to the many different companies who applied to run it, with the sale nearly being delayed even further after bidders Radix and Donuts alleged that they had found discrepancies in Nu Dot Co’s application to the auction. Radix and Donuts even went as far as to launch legal action and apply for a restraining order to delay the sale.

Radix and Donuts, which own the .business and .company domains, saw its allegation dismissed by Icann who saw no issue with Nu Dot Co’s application.

It remains unclear what Nu Dot Com intends to do with its $135 million purchase, or when the domain will be available for firms to buy and use.