The .app top-level domain is like any other custom url ending. Think “.com”and “.net” or the more interesting “.rocks” or “.guru”. Essentially it is the web address for something. The TLD’s have been growing in the past year with a number of new special TLD’s coming into play around the world. Google has scooped up all the rights to the .app TLD for a whopping $25 million. Which means that you aren’t going to be able to pick on up on a cheap $10 a year domain registration.
In a nutshell it means we could start to see a ton of Google addresses, like Google.app or Android.app in the future. It also could mean that Google is ramping up the ability to give developers access to the special domain address through the Google domain registry that they currently offer too. This would be pretty huge for developers to be able to link their apps or developer pages directly to a web address, think www.disney.app to head to the developer page with all the Disney apps versus the current Play Store link of the much less user-friendly https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Disney. They could also create individual app domains like www.disneymoviesanywhere.app. It certainly makes branding and promoting a whole lot easier. I am sure it will more than likely play a role to landing pages and thing as well for the developers who have apps across multiple platforms.
For now we can only speculate what Google might have planned for the .app TLD purchase, but I am thinking it won’t be to far off.
Source: 9to5Google
