Recent Posts
- Alibaba, Name.com among new RDRS opt-ins
- The Swiss can register .swiss domains from next week
- .ai up to 425,000 domains
- A million “free” .music domains up for grabs
- D3 to get $5 million in crypto to apply for .ape gTLD
- Alibaba hit with ICANN breach notice
- New Vegas conference “Davos for Web3 interoperability”
- ICANN content policing power grab may be dead
- Cable company unplugs its dot-brand after acquisition
- Germany crosses 10,000 dot-brand domains milestone
- Founders out as Com Laude gets equity injection
- PIR’s Diaz to leave domain industry
- Some registrars have already quit ICANN’s Whois experiment
- ICANN opens $217 million Grant Program
- Internet could get one-letter gTLDs (but there’s a catch)
- .ai registry fights deadbeats with tweaked auction rules
- Amazon and Google among .internal TLD ban backers
- .ai registry advises buyers not to use GoDaddy
- .post liberalizes with new sunrise period
- Team Internet spends $41 million on content farm
- Epik backtracks on Kiwi Farms claim after legal threat
- .austin names launch on blockchain
- Freenom shuts down 12.6 million domains — report
- GoDaddy’s next .xxx contract may not be a done deal
- GlobalBlock blocking 2.5 million domains
- Microsoft moving its cloud apps from .com to .microsoft
- ICANN 79: anonymous trolls and undercover lawyers
- ICANN scores win in single-letter .com lawsuit
- Cosmetics brand terminates its gTLD
- Up to 70 jobs on the line at Nominet as .uk regs dwindle
- Governments back down on new gTLD next round delay
- Private auctions could be banned in new gTLD next round
- ICANN meeting venue “insensitive and hurtful”
- GoDaddy to start selling graphic.design domains
- GAC spinning up new gTLD curveball at ICANN 79?
- GoDaddy’s GlobalBlock supports blockchain names
- Police .uk domain takedowns dive in 2023
- GoDaddy wants to cut the bullshit from .xxx
- Dueling domain blocking services to launch at ICANN 79
- Freename tries to bridge DNS and blockchain
- Olive retires from ICANN
- Whois policy published without life-saving disclosure rule
- UK gov takes its lead from ICANN on DNS abuse
- Tucows reports 2023 results
- Twitter “completely unresponsive” on clickable domains
- ICANN spends $5 million more than planned in first fiscal half
- .art takes a million domains off its premium list
- KeyTrap ‘the most devastating vulnerability ever found in DNSSEC’
- Freenom settles $500 million Meta lawsuit and will exit domain business
- New gTLD lottery to return in 2026
- First GlobalBlock prices revealed — they ain’t cheap
- Domain universe grows on new gTLDs despite .com shrinkage
- D3 signs up crypto gTLD client number five
- GoDaddy reports strong domains growth
- How to qualify for a $40,000 gTLD
- Registry service provider evaluation handbook published
- WebUnited inks deal to “mirror” country’s TLD in the blockchain
- GoDaddy project unveils brand-blocking calculator
- Report: Monster “misappropriated” millions from Epik
- .com is shrinking but Verisign raises prices again anyway
- D3 announces fourth crypto new gTLD client
- Donald Trump loses second UDRP case
- UK cybersquatting complaints hit record low
- No excuses! PIR to pay for ALL registries to tackle child abuse
- ICANN insists it is working on linkification
- Namecheap sues ICANN over .org price caps
- GoDaddy offers free Ethereum blockchain integration
- Epik reveals who is running the company
- Epik gets acquired again! The plot thickens…
- Airline gTLD crashes and burns
- First chunks of new gTLD Applicant Guidebook drop
- Epik to reveal its owners soon
- Another crypto firm to apply for a new gTLD
- Monster and Royce are NOT involved in Epik?!
- Nominet to overhaul .uk registry, turn off some services
- Russia blames DNSSEC, not Ukraine, for internet downtime
- Team Internet says revenue beat estimates
- Sold for over $20k, insure.ai and dog.ai back in .ai’s expired names auction
- .ai helps UDRP cases rise in 2023, WIPO says
- Freenom’s domains land at Gandi after termination
- .ru domains fly off the shelf as Western sanctions bite
- ICANN picks its first ever Supreme Court
- Lebanon’s ccTLD going back to Lebanon after ICANN takeover
- ICANN picks the domain it will never, ever release
- ICANN approves domain takedown rules
- Has Epik gone “woke”?
- First bits of new gTLD Applicant Guidebook expected next week
- ICANN bans closed generics for the foreseeable
- You can’t use money to buy .box domains
- After 14 years, ICANN practices what it preaches on IDNs
- Weak demand for private Whois data, ICANN data shows
- .ing doing way better than .meme
- DNS Women barred from ICANN funding?
- Dev releases free open-source TLD registry platform
- INCO flips a gTLD to Identity Digital
- Anguilla fears the .ai junk drop
- Five more gTLDs get launch dates
- $10 million of ICANN cash up for grabs
- Almost 50,000 .ai domains sold in a quarter
- ICANN threatens to regulate your speech [RANT]
- Life insurance company kills dot-brand
- ICANN finds new home for Lebanon’s TLD after founder’s death
- ICANN begs people to use its new Whois service
- Shiba Inu outs itself as crypto new gTLD applicant
- Over 50,000 .ai domains sold in three months
- Amazon planning new push into registrar market?
- Registries and registrars vote ‘Yes’ to new DNS abuse rules
- ICANN predicts flattish 2025 for domain industry
- Fast-growing Gname buys another 150 registrars
- GoDaddy service to let you block domains in over 650 TLDs
- Did I find a murder weapon in a zone file?
- ICANN drops the “man” from Ombudsman
- Have your say on police domain takedown powers
- Most registrars are shunning ICANN’s new Whois system
- Nominet to take over .gov.uk
- ICANN picks Istanbul for 2024 meeting
- ICANN’s private Whois data request service goes live
- .au regs slide on 2LD anniversary
- ICANN accused of power grab over $271 million auction fund
- A registrar is getting blamed for an Israeli war propaganda site
- Two more dot-brands bite the dust
- Google sells five-figure AI domain and six-figure .ing hack
- .blackfriday is still a bit rubbish
- Internet Naming Co acquires five more gTLDs
- Domain universe grows despite .com drag
More dot-brands dump their gTLDs
Kevin Murphy,
June 17, 2020, 18:57:20 (UTC),
Domain Registries
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.
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.