NameBee is your source for Blog Aggregation in the Domain Name industry
.ai saw over $600,000 in expired domain auction sales last month, according to new registry operator Identity Digital. The company took over management of Anguilla's ccTLD February 25 and it announced the auctions revenue number in a March 27 blog post. The previous registry held monthly auctions using Dynadot, but Identity Digital switched to Name...
Financial services company Prudential Financial has dumped one of its three dot-brand gTLDs, which it was not using. The company has asked ICANN to terminate its contract to run .pramerica, which, despite the name, provides investment services to the Indian market. The subsidiary uses a .in domain for its web site. While .pramerica has never [̷...
Long-serving ICANN community member and UK government representative Nigel Hickson has died, according to friends and colleagues. He's said to have died at the weekend following a battle with cancer. While the loss will be felt most keenly by his family, Hickson's absence will also be felt by the ICANN community and wider domain name […] The ...
Hilariously named .blog registry operator Knock Knock Whois There has been ordered to change its name to "Knock Knock RDAP There" or risk the wrath of ICANN Compliance. The company has been told it has 30 days to file papers requesting the name change with the California Secretary of State, or ICANN will initiate termination […] The post .blo...
Automattic, which runs WordPress.com and the .blog gTLD registry, says it's switching to Hello Registry from its current provider. Hello Registry is a joint venture of two like-minded national ccTLD non-profits: Canadian (.ca) registry CIRA and Dutch (.nl) registry SIDN. It was launched last November, having been developed under the name CIRA Regis...
I'd always planned, if it turned out ICANN's former interim CEO Sally Costerton was getting paid an absolutely, ridiculously, eye-popping pay packet, that it might be amusing to try to pin the nickname "Cost-a-tonne" on her. Thanks. I'm here all week. Try the turbot. But she wasn't even ICANN's highest-compensated employee last year, according to [...
The Columbian government has put the contract to run .co out for bidding, and it looks like the successful registry could make as much as $77 million over the lifetime of the deal. GoDaddy currently runs .co through its subsidiary .CO Internet, which it acquired when in bought Neustar five years ago. The government's RFP […] The post .co deal...
The registry for the former Soviet Union's .su ccTLD has denied that ICANN plans to kick it off the internet, giving three reasons why its over 100,000 domains are safe. RosNIIROS pointed to Russian law, ICANN ccTLD policy, and the lack of any formal retirement notice as reasons why the ccTLD isn't going anywhere. The […] The post I get a wro...
Having been one of the industry's notable growth stories over the last decade, Team Internet saw its revenue and profit go down in 2024, according to its latest earnings report. The company is also predicting a miserable 2025 as it tries to work around Google's decision to turn off advertising on parked domains by default […] The post Sales a...
ICANN has terminated the contracts of four registrars that haven't paid their accreditation fees in years. US-based Zoo Hosting, UK-based Nerd Origins, and China-based Mixun and Mixun Network Technology have all been canned, following public breach notices in January. Judging by the termination notices, the registrars all stopped paying their quart...
There is currently "no timeline" to remove the Soviet Union's ccTLD from the internet, according to ICANN's new CEO. Asked by yours truly during the Public Forum at ICANN 82 whether retirement proceedings had been initiated against .su, Kurt Lindqvist responded, according to the real-time transcript: ICANN has been in discussions with the managers ...
ICANN is set to kill off its unpopular 60-day transfer lock policy, following a vote at ICANN 82 in Seattle this week. The GNSO Council yesterday voted to accept the final report of its Transfer Policy working group, a mammoth 163-page document that contains 47 recommendations affecting all areas of domain transfers. The removal of […] The po...
A French leather goods company is trashing its lightly-used dot-brand gTLD. Lancaster has told ICANN that it wants to terminate its Registry Agreement for .lancaster. The company added half a dozen names to the gTLD in 2016 — things like bag.lancaster and fashion.lancaster — but they always just redirected to its primary web site at [&#...
Three more of Google's stockpile of long-dormant gTLDs showed signs of activity recently, strongly suggesting the company may be preparing to launch them. The domains get.eat, get.fly and get.here were all registered February 20, according to zone files and Whois records. While none yet resolve, Google typically uses "get" domains for its customer-...
North American candidates for ICANN's board of directors are having their applications politely rejected, the Nominating Committee has confirmed. Speaking to the GNSO Council at ICANN 82 in Seattle yesterday, NomCom chair-elect Tom Barrett said ICANN's rules forbid the committee from now considering candidates from the region. "When we opened the a...
Nova Registry, which runs .link, has announced it plans to apply for 200 new gTLDs when ICANN opens up the next application window about a year from now. It's the first time in this round a company has announced plans to build a huge TLD portfolio. It would cost around $45.4 million in application fees […] The post Nova announces $45 million ...
South Korea's ccTLD registry is seeking to borrow from the success of repurposed ccTLDs, including .ai, with the release of four new third-level namespaces under .kr. This week local registry KISA started selling names in .ai.kr, .it.kr, .me.kr, and .io.kr, following the growth of the ccTLDs .ai, .it, .me and .io, which have all seen […] The ...
There are now more than 25,000 registered it.com domain names, according to it.com Domains. The company said earlier this week that it recently crossed that milestone, about two years after it went to general availability. it.com sells third-level names under the .it.com domain, much like XYZ.com sells .uk.com domains, representing information tech...
ICANN says it will use a combination of AI and crowdsourcing to translate new gTLD program materials on the cheap. Org said in a blog post that when a community member trying to drum up interest in new gTLDs in their local community needs some official ICANN documents in an unsupported language, ICANN will prepare […] The post ICANN turns to ...
Greg DiBiase, senior corporate counsel at Amazon, has been elected to serve on ICANN's board of directors, representing registries and registrars. He beat Reg Levy, associate general counsel at Tucows, in the two-horse second round of voting, and five other candidates overall, to become the Contracted Parties House selection for Seat 13 on the boar...
Identity Digital appears to have taken over the back-end registry for Mauritian ccTLD .mu, potentially improving the company's chances of future-proofing at-risk .io. IANA records show that .mu has started using Identity Digital's nameservers and Whois service. Registrars say the migration to ID's EPP system happened last week. Mauritius is poised ...
Tucows has dramatically dropped out of ICANN's Registration Data Request Service pilot. The company said that RDRS provides a poor user experience that harms user privacy and causes ICANN to produce misleading usage statistics that show an artificially high request denial rate. RDRS is a bit more than half way through a two-year pilot designed [...
Japanese electronics giant Toshiba is throwing its weight behind its dot-brand gTLD, .toshiba. The company announced today that from next month it will start to migrate all of its employees to @mail.toshiba email addresses, starting with group parent Toshiba Corp, which currently uses @toshiba.co.jp. For an unspecified period, mail sent to the curr...
A Norwegian private equity company has dropped its plans to acquire Team Internet after Google changed the way it handles advertising on parked domains, a key source of revenue for the company. Oslo-based Verdane had a deadline of today to announce a formal offer for the company, but instead said it "does not intend to […] The post Google scu...
.ai has twice as many registrars selling it since Identity Digital took over management of the registry in January, according to the company. The company said over the weekend that its channel has double since it announced its partnership with the Government of Anguilla. That seems to mean it now has about 80 registrars, based […] The post .a...
US president Donald Trump has indicated he is likely to back a UK-Mauritius treaty that puts the long-term future of .io domains into question. Speaking to the media yesterday after a meeting with UK prime minister Keir Starmer, Trump said he was "inclined" to support the deal, which would see sovereignty of the Chagos Islands […] The post Tr...
The Chinese are still registering huge numbers of domain names, just apparently not in .com, new numbers suggest. The country's .cn ccTLD grew by more than 1.2 million domains in the second half of 2024 even as .com shrank and new gTLDs grew, according to the latest stats from local registry CNNIC. The registry said […] The post As .com shrin...
The first showdown between new gTLD application consultants D3 Global and Unstoppable Domains has emerged, with the announcement this week of a bid for a cartoons-themed gTLD by a D3 client. D3 said in a press release it has partnered with outfits called Animecoin Foundation and Azuki to apply to ICANN for .anime, representing the […] The pos...
The UK government has introduced legislation that would give police the power to order registries and registrars outside the country to take down domain names being used for serious crime. The new Crime and Policing Bill (pdf), published yesterday, is a sprawling piece of proposed legislation, covering everything from mobile phone theft to antisoci...
ICANN's country-code registries have picked their next representative for the ICANN board of directors. Byron Holland, CEO of Canadian ccTLD registry CIRA won the seat, which was vacated last September with the abrupt resignation of incumbent Katrina Sataki, who had already been reelected for a second term. I believe Holland will join the board, af...
Nominet seems to have become the first major registry services provider to start to retire Whois across its portfolio, already cutting off service for about 70 top-level domains. Queries over port 43 to most of Nominet's former Whois servers are no longer returning responses, and their URLs have been removed from the respective TLDs' records [̷...
An Independent Review Process panel has thrown out a case filed by a failed new gTLD applicant because the applicant was found to have not existed for almost seven years. A Bahrain-based company called GCCIX has applied to run .gcc, for Gulf Cooperation Council, in 2012. Its bid was rejected by ICANN the following year […] The post ICANN wins...
Verisign might have some better news for investors and analysts when it delivers its first-quarter financial results — it looks like .com might have turned a corner and returned to growth. The TLD has added over 540,000 domains to its zone file between the start of the year and February 20, a little over halfway […] The post .com could ...
The creation of the US Department of Government Efficiency raises the possibility of a government objection to .doge, a gTLD that D3 Global has announced it plans to apply for. D3, a domain name consultancy that is promising to deliver gTLDs in next year's application round that connect to identities currently only available on blockchains, […...
The domain industry performed better than expected in the back half of last year — well, better at least than ICANN had predicted. The Org today said it took in $2 million more in revenue than it expected in the second half of 2024 — ICANN's fiscal first half — because the gTLD registries and […] The post $2 million Christma...
Volkswagen's patchy commitment to dot-brand gTLDs is in evidence again this week, as the company has told ICANN it no longer wishes to operate .bentley. Bentley is one of VW's luxury car brands, based in the UK. It's exercised its option to unilaterally terminate its gTLD registry agreement, with no explanation given. The gTLD had […] The pos...
It's going to be the largest ever migration of a single TLD between back-end registry service providers, but it was announced without fanfare late last week. On page four of Tucows CEO Elliot Noss's prepared fourth-quarter remarks to analysts last week, he revealed the company has beaten GoDaddy to take over the contract to run […] The post L...
ICANN has confirmed that a phishing attack was responsible for the hacking of its Twitter account last night. The Org placed this statement, which suggested that the attack may have been more sophisticated than you might have thought, on its home page earlier this evening: On 11 February 2025, ICANN became aware of a successful […] The post Y...
ICANN's Twitter account appeared to be hacked briefly last night, and was used to promote what looks like a pump-and-dump cryptocurrency scam. A series of tweets from the official @ICANN account plugged a memecoin named $DNS from around 0200 UTC today, just when ICANN's California crew would have been clocking off for the day. "2025: […] The ...
Having two of its largest registrars advertising during Sunday's Super Bowl broadcast doesn't seem to have given Verisign's declining .com flagship much of a boost. According to numbers published on the company's web site, .com has grown by about 30,000 domains in the last two days. While that's certainly not to be sniffed it, it's […] The po...
Verisign is predicting more shrinkage at .com and .net in 2025, despite a few notes of optimism from its CEO. The company said last night that its two flagship gTLDs shrunk by a combined 3.7 million domains in 2024, a 2.1% decrease, as I flagged up a couple weeks ago, and that its growth this […] The post More gloom predicted for .com first a...
US government domain names covering policies on child support benefits, law enforcement accountability, and clean energy are among over a dozen deleted by the Trump administration since January 20. The deletions, some of which seem to be linked to the overturning of former Presiden Biden's executive orders, may give some insight into the new admini...
Could there be a .gz? I'm sometimes happy that DI has such a narrow beat. Today, it means I don't have to discuss the legal, political, moral or ethical implications of US President Donald Trump's just-announced plan for Gaza. At a press conference last night, Trump said he wants the Palestinians to leave Gaza, to […] The post Did Trump just ...
ICANN's Registration Data Request Service cost hundreds, maybe even thousands, of dollars every time it was used in its first year, according to an analysis of official stats. RDRS is the system designed to connect entities such as trademark owners, security researchers, and law enforcement with registrars, allowing them to request private domain r...
Public Interest Registry is set to join GlobalBlock, the multi-TLD trademark blocking network, following approval of a series of ICANN registry contract amendments. It will become easily the largest registry operator, by domains under management, to sign up for the service. But its crown jewel, .org, will not be included, I'm told. .charity, .found...
Victims of the recent wildfires in the Los Angeles area have been offered special relief from renewing their expiring domains, according to an ICANN note to registrars. Registrars were told last week that they "will be permitted to temporarily forebear from canceling domain registrations that are unable to be renewed because of the impact of [̷...
Amazon Registry has revealed launch dates for three of its long-dormant gTLDs, and they have the potential to be the most popular of its patchy portfolio. .free, .hot and .spot are to go to sunrise April 2, according to a notice on Amazon's web site and paperwork filed with ICANN. The Trademark Claims period, which […] The post .free domains ...
There are to be six fewer gTLDs on the internet, after ICANN terminated its registry contracts with two companies. Asia Green IT System's agreements for .pars, .shia, .tci, .nowruz and . (.xn--mgbt3dhd) have been cancelled, after a lengthy compliance process, while Kerry Trading Co self-terminated .kerrylogistics. Despite being contracted for a dec...
A registrar has lost its right to sell gTLD domains in part due to its failure to migrate from Whois to RDAP. Spain-based Abansys & Hostytec has had its ICANN registrar contract terminated over a litany of alleged breaches dating back to 2023, and its meager collection of domains will now be given to another […] The post Registrar termin...
ICANN has picked the beneficiaries of up to $10 million it plans to give away in the first year of its Grant Program. The board of directors approved the final slate of applicants, which will now have to sign contracts with ICANN, at its retreat this weekend. While the recipients will not be publicly named […] The post $10 million ICANN givea...
- Welcome!
- NameBee aggregates blogs for the Domain Name industry.
- Custom Feeds
- Add any RSS feed to the information you read daily.
- Blocked Feeds
- Block feeds to remove blogs you’re not interested in.
- Account Settings
- Customize the site by adding or removing feeds.
Don’t have an account yet?
- Customize your settings
- Edit how your blog displays
- Add or remove blogs you read. Sign Up.
About Us
NameBee is your source for all your Domain Name news.
Have a Suggestion for Us?
|
Know of a Domain Name blog that we're missing? Let us know!
|
