Foreigners mostly speak foreign, ccTLD study finds

English may be the lingua franca of the internet, but most foreigners still stubbornly stick to their own tongues, a study has found.

The research, carried out by Oxford Information Labs for CENTR, covered 10 ccTLDs and geo-gTLDs and found that “on average, 76% of web content associated with each TLD reflects the languages spoken in the relevant country or territory.”

English was used in 19% of cases, with other languages coming in at 4%.

The Latin-script ccTLDs in question were .ch (Switzerland), .nl (Netherlands), .pt (Portugal), .ru (Russia), .se (Sweden) and .sk (Slovakia).

Also surveyed was the Cyrillic-script Russian ccTLD .рф and .nu, which is designated to English-speaking Niue but marketed primarily in Swedish-speaking Sweden (it also helpfully makes its zone files available for this kind of research).

The research also covered .cat, a gTLD specifically targeted at the Catalonia region of Spain.

In total, 16.4 million domains, culled from zone files, were looked at. The results were supplemented by research carried out in .nl by local registry SIDN.

Oxford Information Labs said that it was hired “to test the hypothesis that ccTLDs support local languages”

In each TLD, the minimum amount of content in the TLD-appropriate language (after parked pages and spam had been weeded out) was 64% of domains. That appears to be the score for .sk, the Slovakian TLD run by a British registry.

The highest concentration of local language occurred, as you might expect, in the IDN .рф.

Surprisingly, .cat, which I believe is the only TLD in the survey to contractually require “substantial” local-language content in its registrants’ web sites, appears to be about 30% non-Catalan.

The average across all the surveyed TLD was 76% local-language content. The researchers concluded:

This study’s findings indicate that country and regional TLDs boost the presence of local languages online and show lower levels of English language than is found in the domain name sector worldwide.

It is estimated that 54% of all web content is in English.

3 Comments Tagged: cctlds, centr, idns, oxford information labs

.icu joins the million-domains club in one year, but spam triples

Another new gTLD has joined the exclusive list of those to enter seven figures in terms of domains under management.

.icu, managed by ShortDot, topped one million names this week, according to COO Kevin Kopas.

It’s taken about a month for DUM to increase from 900,000 names, and if zone files are any guide half of that growth seems to have happened in the last week.

.icu domains currently sell for between $1 and $2 for the first year at the cheap end of the market, where most regs are concentrated, with renewals closer to the $10 mark.

The gTLD joins the likes of .club, .xyz, .site and .online to cross the seven-figure threshold.

When we reported on the 900,000-reg mark at the end of May, we noted that .icu had a SpamHaus “badness” rating of 6.4%, meaning that 6.4% of all the emails coming from .icu addresses that SpamHaus saw were classified as spam.

That score was roughly the same as .com, so therefore pretty respectable.

But in the meantime, .icu’s badness score has almost tripled, to 17.4%, while .com’s has stayed about the same.

Picking through the Google search results and Alexa list for .icu domains, it appears that high-quality legit web sites are few and far between.

Whether that’s a fixable symptom of .icu’s rapid growth — it’s only about 13 months post-launch — or a predictor of poor long-term potential remains to be seen.

1 Comment Tagged: .icu, new gTLDs, shortdot, spam

Cloudflare “bug” reveals hundreds of secret domain prices

The secret wholesale prices for hundreds of TLDs have been leaked, due to an alleged “bug” at a registrar.

The registry fees for some 259 TLDs, including those managed by Donuts, Verisign and Afilias, are currently publicly available online, after a programmer used what they called a “bug” in Cloudflare’s API to scrape together price lists without actually buying anything.

Cloudflare famously busted into the domain registrar market last September by announcing that it would sell domains at cost, thumbing its nose at other registrars by suggesting that all they’re doing is “pinging an API”.

But because most TLD registries have confidentiality clauses in their Registry-Registrar Agreements, accredited registrars are not actually allowed to reveal the wholesale prices.

That’s kind of a problem if you’re a registrar that has announced that you will never charge a markup, ever.

Cloudflare has tried to get around this by not listing its prices publicly.

Currently, it does not sell new registrations, instead only accepting inbound transfers from other registrars. Registry transaction reports reveal that it has had tens of thousands of names transferred in, but has not created a significant number of new domains.

(As an aside, it’s difficult to see how it could ever sell a new reg without first revealing its price and therefore breaking its NDAs.).

It appears that the only way to manually ascertain the wholesale prices of all of the TLDs it supports would be to buy one of each at a different registrar, then transfer them to Cloudflare, thereby revealing the “at cost” price.

This would cost over $9,500, at Cloudflare’s prices, and it’s difficult to see what the ROI would be.

However, one enterprising individual discovered via the Cloudflare API that the registrar was not actually checking whether they owned a domain before revealing its price.

They were therefore able to compile a list of Cloudflare’s prices and therefore the wholesale prices registries charge.

The list, and the script used to compile it, are both currently available on code repository Github.

The bulk of the list comprises Donuts’ vast portfolio, but most TLDs belonging to Afilias (including the ccTLD .io), XYZ.com and Radix are also on there.

It’s not possible for me to verify that all of the prices are correct, but the ones that are comparable to already public information (such as .com and .net) match, and the rest are all in the ballpark of what I’ve always assumed or have been privately told they were.

The data was last refreshed in April, so without updates its shelf life is likely limited. Donuts, for example, is introducing price increases across most of its portfolio this year.

1 Comment Tagged: afilias, cloudflare, donuts, new gTLDs, pricing, radix, rra, wholesale, xyz.com

.org now has no price caps, but “no specific plans” to raise prices

ICANN has rubber-stamped Public Interest Registry’s new .org contract, removing the price caps that have been in effect for the best part of two decades.

That’s despite a huge outcry against the changes, which saw the vast majority of respondents to ICANN’s public comment period condemn the removal of caps.

The new contract, signed yesterday, completely removes the section that limited PIR to a 10% annual price increase.

It also makes PIR pay the $25,000 annual ICANN fee that all the other registries have to pay. Its ICANN transaction tax remains at $0.25.

PIR, a non-profit which funnels money to the Internet Society, is now allowed to raise its wholesale registry fee by however much it likes, pretty much whenever it likes.

But PIR again insisted that it does not plan to screw over the registrants of its almost 11 million .org domains.

The company said in a statement:

Regarding the removal of price caps, we would like to underscore that Public Interest Registry is a mission driven non-profit registry and currently has no specific plans for any price changes for .ORG. Should there be a need for a sensible price increase at some point in the future, we will provide advanced notice to the public. The .ORG community is considered in every decision we make, and we are incredibly proud of the more than 15 years we have spent as a responsible steward of .ORG. PIR remains committed to acting in the best interest of the .ORG community for years to come.

That basically restates the comments it made before the contract was signed.

The current price of a .org is not public information, but PIR has told me previously that it’s under $10 a year and “at cost” registrar Cloudflare sells for $9.93 per year.

The last price increase was three years ago, reported variously as either $0.88 or $0.87.

ICANN received over 3,200 comments about the contract when it was first proposed, almost all of them opposed to the lifting of caps.

Opposition initially came from domainers alerted by an Internet Commerce Association awareness campaign, but later expanded to include general .org registrants and major non-profit organizations, as the word spread.

Notable support for the changes came from ICANN’s Business Constituency, which argued from its established position that ICANN should not be a price regulator, and from the Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group, which caps should remain but should be raised from the 10%-a-year limit.

There’s a bit of a meme doing the rounds that ICANN has been hit by “regulatory capture” in this case, following a blog post from ReviewSignal.com blogger Kevin Ohashi last week, which sought to demonstrate how those filing comments in favor of the new contract had a vested interest in the outcome (as if the thousands of .org registrants filing opposing comments did not).

But I find the argument a bit flimsy. Nobody fingered by Ohashi had any decision-making power here.

In fact, the decision appears to have been made almost entirely by ICANN employees (its lawyers and Global Domains Division staff) “in consultation with the ICANN board of directors”.

There does not appear to have been a formal vote of the board. If there was such a vote, ICANN has broke the habit of a lifetime and not published any details of the meeting at which it took place.

After the public comment period closed, ICANN senior director for gTLD accounts and services Russ Weinstein prepared and published this comment summary (pdf), which rounds up the arguments for and against the proposed changes to the contract, then attempts to provide justification for the fait accompli.

On the price caps, Weinstein argues that standardizing .org along the lines of most of the other 1,200 gTLDs in existence fits with ICANN’s mission to enable competition in the domain name industry and “depend upon market mechanisms to promote and sustain a competitive environment”.

He also states:

Aligning with the Base gTLD Registry Agreement would also afford protections to existing registrants. The registry operator must provide six months’ notice to registrars for price changes and enable registrants to renew for up to 10 years prior to the change taking effect, thus enabling a registrant to lock in current prices for up to 10 years in advance of a pricing change.

This appears to be misleading. While it’s true that the new contract has the six-month notice period for price increases, so did the old one.

The new contract language takes several sentences to say what the old version did in one, and may remove some ambiguity, but both describe the notice period and lock-in opportunity.

If there’s a problem with how the new .org contract was signed off, it appears to be the lack of transparency.

It’s signed by GDD senior VP Cyrus Namazi, but who made the ultimate decision to sign it despite the outrage? Namazi? CEO Göran Marby? It certainly doesn’t seem to have been put before the board for a formal vote.

What kind of “consultation” between GDD and the board occurred? Is it recorded or noted anywhere? Was the board briefed about the vast number of negative comments the price cap proposal elicited?

Are public comment periods, which almost never have any impact on the end result, just a sham?

In my view, .org (along with .com and .net) are special cases among gTLDs that deserve a more thorough, broad and thoughtful consideration than the new .org contract received.

UPDATE: This article was updated at 1600 UTC to correct information related to .org’s current wholesale price.

3 Comments Tagged: .org, ICANN, pir, price caps, public interest registry, registry agreement, renewal

CentralNic boosts reseller biz with $11.3 million Hexonet buy

CentralNic is to acquire rival reseller-based registrar Hexonet for up to €10 million ($11.3 million), its fourth acquisition in the last 12 months.

Hexonet has over 3.8 million domains under management, according to CentralNic, sold either directly or via one of its over 1,000 resellers.

Hexonet’s primary ICANN accreditation, 1API.net, was responsible for roughly 760,000 gTLD domains at the last count, but appeared to be on the decline.

CentralNic said its reseller business will grow by about 28% in terms of domains due to the deal.

Hexonet had revenue last year of about €16.5 million ($19.4 million) and EBIDTDA of about €0.8 million ($0.9 million), and will immediately contribute to the bottom line, CentralNic said.

But it’s probably not great news for everyone — in order to receive the full €10 million Hexonet had to slash €300,000 from its budget.

CentralNic is paying €7 million in cash now, covered by the €50 million bond it recently issued, and will pay another €3 million in either cash or shares (its choice) on the one-year anniversary of the deal closing, expected this month.

Hexonet has offices in Canada and close to CentralNic’s recently acquired Germany operations.

Hexonet also acts as the de facto exclusive registrar for a handful of dot-brands, including .audi, .volskwagen and .bugatti, relationships that one imagines CentralNic’s registry back-end business could try to leverage.

In the last year, CentralNic has acquired KeyDrive, TPP Wholesale and GlobeHosting.

1 Comment Tagged: 1api, acquisition, centralnic, hexonet