US government closes antitrust investigation on Verisign over .web

The US government has closed the antitrust investigation on Verisign concerning the .web generic top-level domain (gTLD). In January 2017, the US Department of Justice asked Verisign to provide information about its potential operations for .web, after the company (which also operates .com) announced that it had provided funds to Nu Dot Co, the firm that won the auction for the allocation of the .web gTLD. As there is an agreement between Verisign and Nu Dot Co over the transfer of .web to the latter, Verisign now expects that ICANN will conclude the contract with Nu Dot Co over .web and the transfer will be executed. However, it is uncertain whether this will happen, given that .web is also the object of a court case launched by Donuts, which was one of the .web bidders.