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Go Daddy offers Whois privacy for .co domains

Kevin Murphy, December 22, 2010, 21:00:22 (UTC), Domain Registrars

.CO Internet has started allowing registrars to offer Whois privacy services for .co domains, according to Go Daddy.
In a blog post, Go Daddy’s “RachelH”, wrote:

When the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and .CO Internet S.A.S. drafted the .co policy earlier this year, they decided to hold off on private registration to prevent wrongful use of the new ccTLD — especially during the landrush. Now that .co has carved its place among popular TLDs, you can add private registration to your .co domain names.

Unless I’m mistaken, ICANN had no involvement in the creation of .co’s policies, but I don’t think that’s relevant to the news that .co domains can now be made private.
During its first several months, .CO Internet has been quite careful about appearing respectable, which is why its domains are relatively expensive, why its trademark protections were fairly stringent at launch, and why it has created new domain takedown policies.
It may be a sign that the company feels confident that its brand is fairly well-established now that it has decided to allow Whois privacy, which is quite often associated with cybersquatting (at least in some parts of the domain name community).
It could of course also be a sign that it wants to give its registrars some love – by my estimates a private registration would likely double their gross margin on a .co registration.

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Comments (1)

  1. em says:

    Hi,
    I think it’s a bit of both. In good business, you try to create a win-win situation. It is true that they have established themselves already as one of the more popular extensions and obviously that serves to help the profits of the registrars in a lot of different ways (ie private WHOIS).
    The .co has taken a hardline from the beginning which IMO was a solid move considering how difficult it can be to police the internet. That they implemented these security practices from the very beginning, makes .co all the more attractive as an extension.

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