The Domain Race..But What Do You Really Win???

From Washington Post.com Race is on for control of key Internet domain.

The search for the next operator of "dot-net" -- the world's fourth largest Internet domain -- is officially underway, as bidders from around the world had until late last night to submit their applications to the group that oversees the Internet's global addressing system.

The Marina del Rey, Calif.-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will review the bids with the help of a soon-to-be-named third-party evaluator and choose the next operator for the ".net" registry sometime in March, subject to aproval by the federal government.

Whoever controls the registry controls the global master list of Internet addresses ending in ".net." It is home to roughly 5 million addresses (a fraction of the 35 million registered under ".com") but plays a critical role in a vast amount of important Internet traffic. ICANN's decision has far-reaching implications for the Internet, and the world's largest high-tech firms are watching the competition closely.

One of the most vocal bidders has been VeriSign itself. In 1999, VeriSign inked deals with ICANN and the federal government that effectively ensured that the company would maintain control of .com in perpetuity. In return, VeriSign -- which once held a government-approved monopoly over the entire domain-name market -- agreed to relinquish exclusive control over ".org" (the world's fifth largest domain) and .net.

Maybe I dont get it but what is the prize if you win? Access to revenue from a commodity like product? Dot net, dot org, dot com, dot mobi, dot whatever.

If im really interested in winning the "race" I want to have access to the registry that will register every barcode, every RFID tag, every spoken word, every sound.

There are over 3 billion unique barcodes out there now ready to be registered, and estimates say more than 10 billion RFID tags will have been sold by year end.
Each RFID tag will have its own domain too as well as a barcode.
Those figures make the current website population seem miniscule. Thats the race I would want to win.