GoDaddy flips hosting business for $456 million

GoDaddy has sold off its recently acquired PlusServer business for €397 million ($456 million).

The buyer is a private equity firm, BC Partners.

The registrar had taken control of the business when it spent $1.79 billion on Host Europe Group earlier this year, but had said from the start that the asset was for sale.

PlusServer sells hosting to larger companies, which have more demanding support needs that small-business-focused GoDaddy is accustomed to dealing with.

The unit was bringing in annual revenue approaching $100 million per year.

GoDaddy said it planned to put the proceeds of the flip towards paying off some loans.

Comment Tagged: acquisition, bc partners, godaddy, heg, host europe group, plusserver

Domain growth slows a lot in Q1

The growth of the domain name industry slowed in the first quarter, numbers published today by Verisign reveal.

According to its latest Domain Name Industry Brief (pdf), the domain universe grew to 330.6 million in Q1.

That’s an increase of 1.3 million names on Q4 2016, a 0.4% sequential increase, and 11.8 million names, 3.7% growth, compared to Q1 2016.

In the Q4 DNIB, Verisign reported industry growth of 0.7% and 6.8% respectively.

The only change on the list of the top 10 TLDs was that .nl and .xyz switched places (.xyz is now in 10th place, with 5.6 million names, but this rank will not last long).

ccTLDs in general did not match the growth of the overall market. There were approximately 143.1 million ccTLD domains at the end of March, up 0.3% sequentially and 1.7% year over year, both substantially smaller numbers than reported in Q4.

The free ccTLD .tk, which has been responsible for huge swings in recent reports, is reported to have declined by about 100,000 names to 18.6 million.

Excluding .tk, the growth rate of ccTLDs was better — 0.5% sequentially and 3.9% compared to the year-ago quarter.

Verisign’s data is largely based on zone files for gTLDs and independent researcher ZookNic for ccTLDs.

Comment Tagged: dnib, domain name industry brief, versign

Governments slammed for overreach as Amazon wins gTLD appeal

Amazon has won its appeal against the rejection of its .amazon gTLD application, in a ruling that criticizes ICANN for giving too much deference to government advice.

The Independent Review Process panel’s 2-to-1 ruling, delivered July 11 and published this week, means that .amazon and its Chinese and Japanese translations has been un-rejected and ICANN will have to consider approving it again.

The ruling (pdf) turns on the idea that ICANN’s board of directors rejected the gTLD based on nothing more than the groundless objections of a few South American governments.

Amazon’s applications were rejected three years ago when ICANN accepted the consensus advice of its Governmental Advisory Committee.

That advice, which had no attached rationale, had come largely at the behest of Brazil and Peru, two countries through which the Amazon river flows.

At issue was the word “Amazon”, which the governments protested matched the name of an important geographic region extending into several countries.

But the string was not protected by ICANN’s new gTLD program rules because it does not match the name of an administrative region of any country.

Regardless, Brazil and Peru said that to give .amazon to Amazon would prevent it being used in future by citizens of the informal South American region.

GAC consensus was reached only after the US government, for political reasons connected to the then-recent announcement of the IANA transition, decided to withdraw its objection to the advice.

Consensus, under GAC rules means simply that no one government objects to the proposed advice. It does not indicate unanimity.

But at no point in the pubic record of discussions within the GAC or ICANN board did anyone give any substantial public policy reasons for the objection, the IRP panel has now found.

Global Domains Division chief Akram Atallah testified before the panel that consensus GAC advice sets “too high for the Board to say no.”

It seems ICANN sometimes just assumes that GAC advice by default is rooted in sound public policy, even when that is not the case.

Brazil and Peru’s objections “do not appear to be based on well-founded public policy concerns that justify the denial of the applications” the panelists wrote.

The panel wrote:

We conclude that GAC consensus advice, although no reasons or rationale need be given, nonetheless must be based on a well-founded public interest concern and this public interest basis must be ascertained or ascertainable from the entirety of the record…

the Board cannot simply accept GAC consensus advice as conclusive. The GAC has not been granted a veto under ICANN’s governance documents.

So, while the GAC was under no obligation to state its reasons for objecting to .amazon, the ICANN board was obliged to state its reasons for accepting this advice beyond just “the GAC made us do it”.

As somebody who spent much of 2011 arguing that the GAC new gTLD veto was a bad idea, it’s nice to see the panel agree with me.

The GAC itself also erred by refusing to consider Amazon’s arguments in favor of its application, the IRP panel’s majority found.

Peru had publicly claimed that the string “Amazon” was protected under ICANN rules, which was not true, and Amazon did not have the opportunity to correct the record.

Amazon had also pointed out that the Brazilian oil company Ipiranga was granted its application for .ipiranga, despite its name matching the name of a Brazilian river apparently so important that it is referred to in the Brazilian national anthem.

However, the IRP panel decided that because ICANN’s board had not taken any action on .ipiranga, there was no basis for it to consider whether Amazon had been unfairly subject to different treatment.

In conclusion, this is what the panel has sent to the board:

The Panel recommends that the Board of ICANN promptly re-evaluate Amazon’s applications in light of the Panel’s declarations above. In its re-evaluation of the applications, the Board should make an objective and independent judgment regarding whether there are, in fact, well-founded, merits-based public policy reasons for denying Amazon’s applications. Further, if the Board determines that the applications should not proceed, the Board should explain its reasons supporting that decision. The GAC consensus advice, standing alone, cannot supplant the Board’s independent and objective decision with a reasoned analysis.

It seems Amazon’s chances of having .amazon approved have improved. If ICANN wants to reject the applications again it is going to have to come up with some good reasons, some good reasons that possibly do not exist.

The panel also ordered ICANN to reimburse Amazon for the $163,045.51 it spent on the IRP.

2 Comments Tagged: amazon, gac, ICANN, irp

ICANN gives the nod to Donuts-Rightside merger

ICANN has given its consent to the acquisition of Rightside by rival new gTLD registry Donuts, according to the companies.

The nod means that one barrier to the $213 million deal has been lifted.

Rightside, which is listed on Nasdaq, still needs the majority of its shareholders to agree to the deal and to satisfy other customary closing conditions.

ICANN approval does not mean the organization has passed any judgment about whether the deal is pro-competition or anything like that, it just means it’s checked that the buyer has the funds and the nous to run the TLDs in question and is compliant with various policies.

All new gTLD Registry Agreements given ICANN the right to consent — or not — to the contract being assigned to a third party.

The acquisition was announced last month at the end of a turbulent year or so for Rightside.

1 Comment Tagged: acquisition, donuts, ICANN, rightside

Junk drop cuts .xyz in half, .top claims volume crown

The .xyz gTLD has seen its zone file halve in size, as millions of free and cheap domains were not renewed.

The former volume leader among new gTLDs started this month with a tad over 5.2 million domains in its zone.

But its July 17 zone contained 2.5 million, much less than half as many, DI analysis shows.

The precipitous decline means that Chinese-run gTLD .top, increasingly notorious as a go-to TLD for spammers, is now literally at the top of the league table, when you measure new gTLDs by zone file volume, with 2.6 million names.

The primary reason for .xyz losing so many names is of course the expiration of most of the domains that were sold for just $0.01 — or given away for free — in the first few days of June 2016, and the aggressive promotional pricing on offer for the remainder of that month.

On May 30, 2016, there were just under 2.8 million names in the .xyz zone. By July 1, 2016, that number had topped 6.2 million, an increase of 3.4 million over a single month.

That was .xyz’s peak. The zone has been in gradual decline ever since.

Domains generally take 45 days to drop, so it’s entirely possible XYZ.com will see further losses over the next month or so.

There’s nothing unusual about seeing a so-called “junk drop” a year after a TLD launches or runs a free-domains promotion. It’s been well-understood for over a decade and has been anticipated for .xyz for over a year.

But compounding its problems, the .xyz registry appears to still be banned in China, where a substantial portion of its former customer base is located.

The company disclosed over two months ago that it had a “temporary” problem that had seen its license to sell domains via Chinese registrars suspended.

The ban was related to XYZ falling out with its original “real name verification” provider, ZDNS, which was tasked with verifying the identities of Chinese registrants per local government regulations.

I’ve never been able to confirm with either party the cause of this split, but everyone else involved in the Chinese market I’ve asked has told me it related to a dispute over money.

Regardless, two months later the major Chinese registrars I checked today still appear to not be carrying .xyz names.

XYZ has meanwhile signed up with alternative Chinese RNV provider Tele-info, and just three days ago submitted the necessary paperwork (pdf) with ICANN to have the move approved as a registry service under its contract.

In that request, XYZ said the new RNV service “will allow XYZ to reenter certain domain name markets”, suggesting that it has not yet regained Chinese government approval to operate there.

3 Comments Tagged: .xyz, centralnic, china, ICANN, new gTLDs, rnv, rsep, tele-info, xyz.com, zdns