Recent Posts
- Failed .org buyer Ethos Capital buys Donuts
- Crackdown looms for new gTLD auction gaming
- Would-be new country wants to share another country’s ccTLD
- 153 registrars fingered for ICANN security probe
- ICANN axes Cancun again. Apparently there’s a pandemic
- Gun nut site crashes at Epik after GoDaddy shoots it down
- It’s pandemic continuity versus gender diversity in ICANN’s board wish-list
- Free domains for .in registrants
- Here’s why two ICANN directors opposed extending Marby’s CEO contract
- Rules for the next new gTLD round near the final straight
- Island demands return of its “naked” ccTLD
- Donuts punter welcomes our new alien overlords in December premium sale
- Net 4 India gets unwelcome Christmas gift from ICANN
- Fuji Xerox kills off gTLD after rebrand
- EURid suspends 80,000 domains as Brexit transition ends
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- Donuts acquisition of Afilias closes, integration work begins
- GoDaddy pranks employees with “insensitive” phishing test
- US sneaks public Whois demands into pandemic relief bill
- Verisign drops half a mill on pandemic relief
- Mixed messages from ICANN on pandemic travel in 2021
- ICANN predicts rosy post-pandemic domain industry — time to start panicking?
- DI World Global International Headquarters is relocating
- ICANN throws the book at Net4 over dodgy transfer claims
- Fraud checks coming to .ch as SWITCH renews contract
- South African registry to be merged with film censor, broadband regulator
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- ICANN could block Donuts from buying Afilias
- Westerdal offloads two more gTLDs to Donuts
- Whois privacy group finds its new chair
- Three more new gTLDs blink out of existence
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- WIPO handles 50,000th UDRP case as coronavirus drives complaints
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- .forum sunrise period will cost less than half the regular reg fee
- .trust finds a new home with UNR
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- 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
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- .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
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- 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
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- 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
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- ICANN 69 returning to YouTube
- Three-letter .blog domains priced up to $100k
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- 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
“Ditch .com!” government to tell Indians
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.
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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.