Recent Posts
- Vaccine agency to get more domain takedown powers next year
- Domain growth dropped off in Q3, says Verisign
- Donuts boss discusses shock Afilias deal
- GoDaddy has a secret weapon in its push into corporate domains
- Donuts acquires Afilias to create registry giant
- ICANN finally addresses Net 4 India meltdown, but mysteries remain
- Masochistic mug urgently wanted for thankless, pay-free ICANN leadership role
- ICANN made over $500k in secret lawyer payments over [REDACTED] legal dispute
- .spa registry relocates to .xyz
- .forum sunrise period will cost less than half the regular reg fee
- .trust finds a new home with UNR
- Web.com acquires Kiwi registrar Freeparking
- GoDaddy set to pay millions to settle robocalling class action
- Tributes as “great mentor” Marilyn Cade dies
- GoDaddy sees 12% growth in domains revenue
- One-letter .lu domains could be bought for peanuts
- Another domain firm going private as Endurance announces $3 billion deal
- Verisign increases focus on .com after flogging public DNS to Neustar
- Blood on the boardroom floor after MMX admits revenue screwup
- Angry investor sues for 30% of new .spa gTLD
- Amazon sold rights to .box gTLD for $3 million
- Big pharma firm dumps its gTLD
- Facebook to enter the retail registrar business?
- .web ruling might not come this year
- Verisign sells a million more domains than it did last year
- Free speech, or bad faith? UDRP panels split on Everything.sucks domains
- The internet just got its first proper new gTLD of the year, and the timing couldn’t be worse
- ICANN may not meet again for a looong time
- ICANN denies Whois policy “failure” as Marby issues EU warning
- These eight companies account for more than half of ICANN’s revenue
- Lockdown bump was worth $600,000 to ICANN, but end of Club Med saves 10x as much
- That .sucks weirdness? Worse than I thought
- Something weird’s going on at .sucks
- Are 25x price increases on the cards as XYZ corners the cars market?
- .gay and Star Trek star troll the right to promote new gTLD
- Forty weddings and a funeral? .wed is dead but may come up for auction
- Holy Scheisse! Did you know ICANN 69 starts TOMORROW?
- MMX probing accounting of mystery contract
- NamesCon will be back to in-person events next July
- .eu registry contract up for grabs
- EURid suspends and delays thousands of coronavirus domains
- .jobs plans to raise millions from premium names after dumping its sponsor
- Peaceful transfer of power? GNSO’s next chair is a shoo-in
- Two American women appointed to ICANN board
- Europe’s top dogs could decide the future of Whois
- ICANN playing ping-pong on closed generics controversy
- Has ICANN cut off its regulatory hands?
- Will you shut up, man? Trump takedown domain on sale for ridiculous fee
- MMX revenue down even as sales rise during pandemic
- This ICANN comment period is a Kafkaesque nightmare
- Could .cpa be the most successful new gTLD sunrise yet?
- ICANN 69 returning to YouTube
- Three-letter .blog domains priced up to $100k
- Whois plan approved, but it may be a waste of money
- Should YOU have to pay when lawyers access your private Whois info?
- Nominet shuts down “hostile” discussion forum
- Donuts to launch .contact next week
- GoDaddy denies weird front-running claim
- Is India’s largest registrar about to go titsup? And where the hell is ICANN?
- Webcentral rejects Web.com buyout bid for LOWER offer from Aussie telco
- Portugal reports lockdown boom continued through the summer
- No ICANN meetings until 2021
- ZADNA hikes up the price of .za domains
- Floodgates, open! Trademark Clearinghouse now supports .com
- Radix premium renewals approach $1 million
- GoDaddy could lose control of .co this week
- ICANN ordered to freeze .hotel after “serious questions” about trade secrets “theft”
- CentralNic parking boosts revenue even as its registrars suffer
- ICANN will spend $51,000 on your broadband
- Verisign measures the industry’s lockdown bump
- ICANN apologizes to “arms dealer” claim security firm after email goes missing
- Amazon waves off demand for more government blocks
- Told us so? Nominet ditches auctions plan, will charge drop-catchers higher fees instead
- Schreiber really did sue you all, sorry
- Fight over closed generics ends in stalemate
- New gTLD prices could be kept artificially high
- Here’s what’s in the NamesCon Online schwag bag
- New back-end approval program could reduce the cost of a new gTLD
- Single/plural gTLD combos to be BANNED
- ICANN might pay for your lockdown broadband
- The end of the beginning? ICANN releases policies for next round of new gTLDs
- It’s a CONSPIRACY! Canadian registrant “sues” pretty much everybody
- “Arms dealer” registrar probed by ICANN
- No lockdown bump for .eu as domain base shrinks in Q2
- After a year’s delay, .gay reveals launch dates
- ICANN names Egypt-based head of Istanbul office
- Countries ask Amazon for thousands more domain blocks
- Dot-brand fizzles out after acquisition
- The two biggest registrars knock it out of the park in Q2
- Domain industry had best April ever under lockdown
- .bible-thumping anti-porn registrar goes titsup
- The pricey, complex, clusterfuck plan to reopen Whois
- Tucows sells off Ting business, retreats into the back-end
- No .sex please, we’re infected!
- Domainers immune from the lockdown bump?
- Drop auctions not a slam-dunk, says Nominet
- After Chapter 11 filing, JCPenney dumps its dot-brand
- Israeli registrar denies “arms dealer” claims
- Nominet members revolt over “deepest pockets wins” auction plans
- CSC becomes first foreign registrar to get the China nod
- ICANN close to becoming $200 million gift-giver
- The $135 million battle for .web could be won in weeks
- .com renewals lowest in years, but Verisign sees lockdown bump anyway
- ICANN washes its hands of Amazon controversy
- Google’s .new now generally available
- $11 billion dot-brand blames coronavirus as it self-euthanizes
- ICANN still has no clue how coronavirus will affect the domain industry
- ICANN throws out “Ugly Houses” UDRP appeal
- Brazil to launch domains for detectives, librarians and geologists
- Endurance also got a lockdown bump in Q2
- Nominet wants to kill off the .uk drop-catching market
- Right to reply: new gTLD applicant hits back at my “delusional” comments
- One.com takes big chunk of Danish market with third acquisition this year
- Web.com acquires another of the original five registrars
- Mucho weirdness as Google “forgets” to renew major domain
- First deadbeat dot-brand ripped from the root
- Coronavirus helps .nl beat 6 million regs
- NamesCon Online ticket prices and name change revealed
- GoDaddy domains doing just fine during pandemic, lays off hundreds anyway
- I was wrong, rejected “racist” web site didn’t go to Epik
- World’s most deluded new gTLD applicant makes coronavirus pitch
- Does ICANN have a race problem?
- As the world burns, ICANN gives its richest execs huge pay rises
- Web.com is kicking out a racist web site. How long before it winds up at Epik?
- Over 660,000 “coronavirus” domains registered
“Ditch .com!” government to tell Indians
Kevin Murphy,
July 27, 2016, 09:49:37 (UTC),
Domain Registries
The Indian government is to urge citizens to register .in domain names instead of .com, according to local reports.
The Economic Times reports today that the Ministry of Economy and IT is to launch a “massive advertising campaign aimed at companies, individuals and startups” promoting .in.
Rajiv Bansal, MEIT joint secretary, is reported as saying the campaign will play up to nationalist sentiments
The government wants to grow .in from about 2.1 million domains to 3 million domains by March next year, it said.
Prices could come down to the $2 to $3 range, the paper said.
The campaign is due to start in a month or so, it was reported.
For a second I thought your title was about my domain name ditch.com 🙂
The problem with .in is that its version of UDRP makes UDRP look like a perfect system. .In decisions are a joke.
You should sell it to Radix or other new gTLD registries, it goes perfectly with “unCOMplicate” and similar themes…
That’s a good idea
I’m sure we will see an explosion of more registrations if the price goes down that much.
Will we ? Price is not the only issue affecting domain registrations in a country like India, local language support is also a challenge in a country that have many of those.
Actually, local language support isn’t nearly as crucial an issue in India as it is in say, China. That said, the Registry has been fairly sporting when it comes to promotions, with most Registrars offering deep discounts anyway. Awareness is a far bigger problem in a nation with over 60 million enterprises.
.IN is a very promising ccTLD, despite flaws in the INDRP. Ultimately the registry will see which side its bread is buttered on, and the market itself will lead to policy revision.
Many Indian .IN investor colleagues of mine are very enthusiastic about this forthcoming ad campaign by NIXI.
Ditch.com … Hard to take seriously a .COM domain that advocates abandoning .COM. Good brand name for other purposes, though.
It is a lot harder for a registry to change the habits of a market when the market itself is still in the early, outward looking phase. Most websites and development in that phase tend to be pitching to a global/export market and the .COM TLD is the most accepted TLD for that purpose. What the .IN registry has to do is to build usage in the .IN ccTLD so that it becomes the First Choice TLD for local businesses and users. Otherwise it will trigger a boom and bust cycle like those seen in .INFO, .XYZ etc. The renewal rates on heavily discounted registrations varies but on free registrations and substantially discounted ones, it is close to 5%.
@John McCormac,
In cases where the advertising is aimed primarly at domainers and pricing is dropped to 50 cents or even 1 penny, then – yes, absolutely – the registry encourages massive speculation by bulk buyers who are very unlikely to put domains to use. So, as you say, the name space locks itself into a boom and bust cycle.
But if the advertising is aimed at real business owners and consumers rather than domainers … and if registrations are only discounted by (say) 50% and not poured out onto the street for a million pennies … then the outcome may be quite different, leading to more real usage. In that scenario, the renewal rates could be much more stable and the doom of a boom/bust cycle averted.
Cheap domains are often felt to be inconsequential by owners who register them without any real deliberation. But “cheap” is relative. If a domainer in Berlin pays $3 for a .IN domain, he may feel little attachment to it. But to an Indian business owner registering his first .IN domain, that $3 (while hardly a fortune) counts for a bit more.