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Donuts acquires its 242nd gTLD
Kevin Murphy,
April 29, 2019, 23:13:17 (UTC),
Domain Registrars
Donuts, the registry with the largest stable of new gTLDs, has added its 242nd string to its bow.
The company seems to have acquired .contact from, nominally at least, smaller portfolio rival Top Level Spectrum.
The ICANN contract for the gTLD was transferred to one of Donuts’ subsidiaries a couple weeks ago.
According to TLS CEO Jay Westerdal, while TLS was the signatory of the contract the “economic owner” of the TLD was Whitepages.com, an online directory services provider, which paid for the original uncontested .contact application.
Whitepages.com doesn’t appear in the application, the registry agreement, or the IANA records. I was unaware of the connection until today.
Despite being in the root since December 2015, .contact never actually launched. Donuts has not yet filed its launch dates with ICANN either, but it’s usually fairly speedy about pumping out strings.
Sounds like another abandoned tld from large company who has scrapped plans.
Instead of these changing the world they will all just end up with portfolio holders who will be able to make it work even on low volumes. After 5 years Icann’s new tld program is in disarray, it will survive but only at 5% of expectations.
Crosstown traffic.