Recent Posts
- Pirate Bay founder says ICANN won’t let him be a registrar
- ICANN finally cans Net 4 India
- Got beef with ICANN? Why you may not want to use the Ombudsman
- EU cancels .eu tender after Brexit cock-up
- More acquisitions? GoDaddy to raise $800 million
- Facebook lawsuit brings one country’s domain to a screeching halt
- CentralNic buys German monetization firm for up to $13 million
- .hotel battle lands ICANN in court over accountability dodges
- ICANN purges another dormant dot-brand
- Conspiracy nut ordered to pay thousands to “kingpins” as “cartel” lawsuit chucked out
- Three ICANN directors voted against Marby’s pay rise
- Former ICANN vice-chair Disspain joins Donuts
- Donuts acquires four more gTLDs, but allows one to be scrapped
- Rival wants the truth about the Afilias-Donuts deal amid “collusion” claims
- Coronavirus has made ICANN $11 million richer than predicted so far this year
- Lockdown bump sees GoDaddy double customer gains in 2020
- Brit .eu owners get another three-month stay of execution
- Verisign upgrades its cash-printing machine but warns post-pandemic “could go either way”
- Nominet declares member coup “invalid”
- Public comments open on new Whois policies
- ICANN CEO gets 5% pay rise
- Security firm sues Facebook to overturn UDRP loss of “good faith” typo domains
- Registrar giant created as Web.com merged with Endurance
- Nominet chair eats humble pie to stave off mass board cull
- ShortDot adds fourth gTLD to its stable, plans March launch
- Nominet boss has epiphany and calls for calm as his job hangs by a thread
- One year on, Namecheap still fighting aborted .org takeover and may target GoDaddy and Donuts next
- Defensive windfall on the cards for .spa? It’s not just for spas any more
- Two more dot-brands take the easy way out
- RobinHood.club showered with five-star reviews after .com confusion
- EURid reports 3% growth in final quarter before Brexit crunch
- Webcentral to change its branding yet again after tricky takeover
- Fire the board! Registrars attempt a coup at Nominet
- .club back over a million names as Clubhouse drives growth
- Eight years after asking, Israel to get its Hebrew ccTLD
- Time is running out for Net4 as ICANN questions Indian court ruling
- UNR getting out of the registry business with $17 million no-reserve auctions on 23 new gTLDs
- Amid .club boom, one AV vendor is blocking the whole damn TLD
- New rules could stop registries ripping off big brands
- MMX vows to refocus under new boss after crappy 2020
- 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
- GoDaddy’s female geeks make a bit more than men
- 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
- There’s one obvious pick for next year’s ICANN Community Excellence Award
- 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
- NamesCon Europe founder Dietmar Stefitz reportedly dies
- Credit union gTLD changes hands to perhaps surprising buyer
- After 20 years, DomainTools takes its first VC dough
- Gay charities get first taste of domain cash
- CIRA hits major .ca milestone on 20th anniversary
- .org made $97 million last year
- XYZ launches its beauty-themed gTLDs with slashed prices
- “Criminal” domain suspensions drop again in .uk but thousands of pandemic domains frozen
- NameSilo in profit as sales rise 11%
- CentralNic more than doubles revenue as parking business thrives
- WIPO handles 50,000th UDRP case as coronavirus drives complaints
- Brits get small reprieve in Brexit domain crackdown
- 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
More dot-brands dump their gTLDs
A further three new gTLDs have applied to ICANN for self-termination over the last few months, bringing the total to 76.
They’re all dot-brands: .sbs, .rightathome and .symantec.
The most recent application came from the Australian broadcaster SBS, for Special Broadcasting Service. This seems to be a case of a brand owner briefly experimenting with redirects to its .au domain, then deciding against it.
.symantec is biting the dust because the security company Symantec recently rebranded as NortonLifeLock Inc.
.rightathome also appears to be a case of a discontinued brand, in this case formerly used by consumer products firm SC Johnson.
Related posts (automatically generated):
African brands wiped off the map as ICANN flips the kill switch on 10 gTLDs
$5 billion e-commerce site to dump .com for dot-brand
Generics versus brands as two more gTLDs are sold
Tagged: .rightathome, .sbs, dot-brands, ICANN, new gTLDs, symantec, termination
Wow! All this chatter about registrations of fraudulent domains at the registrar level (elsewhere in DomainIncite.com), BUT WHAT ABOUT THE SNAKE OIL SALESMEN who solicited all these gTLD applications while offering their “expertise”?
The upfront cost of 76 withdrawn dotBrand applications at $185,000 each totals USD14,060,000 – yes, OVER 14 MILLION DOLLARS. This figure meets the threshold for “grand theft” in any legal system following the (Neanderthal, property Trumps life) British legal system.
Add to that figure the “consulting fees” charged by such “experts” – such as Neustar, which breathlessly touted the new TLD round as “THE NEXT BIG THING.” Fortunately for those left standing – and perhaps more than a few of those looking for avenues to recoup their loses in the near term, Neustar has now exited the domain name industry … but may not be beyond the reach of the courts.
Neustar’s exit is truly SUCH A LOSS OF SUCH EXPERTISE, MOVING FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH, as they did from their hype of the nTLD round, to their loss of the FCC number portability contract (oops!), to the .AU acquisition (YIKES!), to the sale to Golden Gate. Today, in fact, Neustar appears to be now re-inventing themselves as consulting EXPERTS to those corporations with too much money and too little corporate expertise to know the difference.
One shall not mention the installation of their current “dishonest and week” CEO who, as a “Wharton man,” carries all of the weaknesses – and none of the billions (if, in fact, any) – of the Wharton man currently cornholing the American presidency.
President (and former U.S. General) Dwight D. Eisenhower warned America to “beware the military-industrial complex.” As the love-child of Lockheed Martin and Perot Systems (Perot, as in “crazy aunt in the attic” Ross Perot who, as a third-party candidate, cost George H.W. Bush a second term in favor of Bill – “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” – Clinton) – Neustar has and continues to pursue – albeit to-date fatally – the military industrial complex business model of “whatever the traffic will bear” and remains unWOKE to the concept of “free market forces.”
Quel dommage. How many investors in Neustar stock have to be sacrificed on their CEO’s Altar of Hubris before they realize, as Forrest Gump did that, “Stupid is as stupid does.”
N’import de qui
Spot-on.
I will be dumping 3 of mines by the end of this year. Originally they were just used as a shortcut to redirect to a specific page of the website, but its really not needed.
The .BRANDs were a big mistake after large-scale Domain Tasting ended in 2007. They were largely sold on the basis of brands and trademarks being massively abused. Many of the .BRAND zones are NIC-only zones.
I believe that while most brands indeed fell to the fallacy of defending against abuse, some saw it as a conditional opportunity, one that if people moved away from the dominant TLD (.com in the US, local ccTLD in a lot of countries), they would have hedged their bets.
But this hasn’t happened yet, and might never happen. Metlife looks more like the first, Intel more like the second.
I say they are a great tool and we will sell plenty of them for the next round.
They need time and to get rid of the $25,000 annual Icann tax.
Does any brand actually use them beyond an expensive redriect or a corporate magazine / company information portal? Don’t most if not all even after 8 years still use .com and the local country code for real business and customers?
.intel and .metlife also bite the dust.
GTLD = Good To Lose Dollars
,com is a gTLD.