[longtailofsighs]

ICANN makes a cut of every registration, not just the TLD application fee, or the quarterly registry fees.

ICANN has LOTS of problems, but it is actually incentivized to see TLDs in general availability.

[Closi]

Google will have paid ICANN $500k just to read the application for these TLD's ($185k * 3) and has paid them an additional $500k since then just to maintain them.

I'm not wholly convinced that ICANN is operating solely out of a sense of generosity. It sounds to me more like "pay me a lot of money and I will look after you" (i.e. a protection racket). I suspect ICANN is actually motivated to look after google as a high-paying customer and registrar, rather than be what they should be, which is acting independent, treating everyone the same, and not just using everything as an opportunity to cash-grab.

[dmingod666]

TBF, 500k + 500k for controlling 3 TLDs (333k/TLD) is not a lot of money. For Google it's a rounding error.

[Closi]

When you sell 1,200 TLDs it ends up being good money.

ICANN manage to make $200 million a year for just managing a database of 300 million value key pairs and 1200 tlds.

[hetspookjee]

It sometimes is astounding how cheap bribery can be, right?