Google’s first new gTLD racks up 2,300 domains
Google’s Charleston Road Registry reached 2,300 .みんな domain names on the new gTLD’s first day of general availability, immediately making it the biggest IDN gTLD by volume so far.
The string is Japanese for “everyone”. As you might expect, it’s an unrestricted space.
About 230 names — 10% of the TLD — are non-IDNs. I believe the number also includes some sunrise registrations.
It actually went into GA on Tuesday, but data was not available yesterday.
While it’s not in the same ballpark as the likes of .guru, it nevertheless overtook the only other IDN gTLD to launch so far, dotShabaka’s شبكة. (Arabic for “web”), which has 1,643 names.
Google sold the names via 17 accredited registrars, only one of which appears to be Japanese. The list excludes most of the biggest registrars.
.みんな is unusual in that Google intends to run its Trademark Claims service forever, rather than turning it off after the 90 days required by its Registry Agreement with ICANN.
Kevin – noticed in this piece and via DI Pro (plug plug) that there are days where the zone data is “not available” from various registries.
Any insight as to what happening there?
Sometimes it’s technical teething troubles with the CZDAP, between ICANN and the registry. For one example, a registry may publish a day’s zone file *after* ICANN attempts to download it, so they’re a day out of sync. Sometimes it’s a problem of process, also beyond my control.
.みんな accepts ASCII while .shabaka only accepts IDNs. That is the difference.
Since only 10% of .”everyone” registrations are non-IDNs, that doesn’t seem to be the reason…
There is more than 1,000,000 (MILLION) Dot Mobi domains registred as we speak.
(Read between the lines)
Why on earth are they allowing ASCII registrations? That makes no sense at all.
Besides what Notcom Tom mentioned, it’s easier to type ascii.IDN than IDN.IDN, since . is an ASCII character… so for a Japanese to type IDN.IDN the sequence is:
– Switch keyboard to IDN mode
– Type IDN
– Switch keyboard to ASCII mode
– Type .
– Switch keyboard to IDN mode
– Type IDN
Easy, uh ?
Relative to other Asian cultures, Japanese navigate English characters well. They have a proclivity for western culture also.
This may be one reason why the Japanese geo-tlds chose ascii characters rather than their native characters.
IIRC, the IDN.jp also never really caught on due to problems at the start.
That said, in Japan most marketing uses search stings instead of URLs anyway.
OTOH, Japan is the first country where I spotted .travel domains “in the wild”.