"Last week, Internet overseeing organisation ICANN and technical arm IANA, quietly approved Google's application and gave it ID number 895. It is now entitled to sell any .biz, .com, .info, .name, .net, .org and .pro domains (but not .aero, .coop, or .museum). Interestingly though, a Google spokeswoman told us it has no plans to sell any at the moment.
The reason it paid a $2,500 application fee and $6,500 to cover six top-level domains is that it "wants to get a better understanding of the domain name system [and so] increase the quality of our search results".
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02...domain_seller/