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Uniregistry beats Donuts to .shopping, but .shop still in play

Kevin Murphy, January 18, 2016, 19:19:54 (UTC), Domain Registries

Uniregistry has emerged as the successful registry-to-be of .shopping from the convoluted .shop/.shopping new gTLD contention set.
Donuts, the only competing applicant for the string, withdrew its application late last week.
As we previously reported, the .shop/.shopping contention sets were joined at the hip due to a bizarre string similarity challenge, making the scheduled auction very complex.
But Donuts and Uniregistry seem to have come to a private arrangement about .shopping, outside of the ICANN auction process, making .shop a straightforward nine-way fight.
Donuts tells me the auction, in which it is participating, is still scheduled for January 27.


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Comments (4)

  1. Ryan says:

    Quite frankly I think everyone hopes donuts wins, as they are fair with pricing, and release selection.
    Uniregistry simply blocks names, and prices them at $50K, the total opposite of what the GTLD process was setup for.
    Also many rumblings with domains who are sick of taryn outbidding them with their own money on namejet etc… pick a business, and go with it, don’t piss on your own customers.
    To each their own

  2. ada says:

    I really hope Donuts will win the .shop.
    Any string which belongs to Uniregistry I do not buy.
    Schilling is well known for blocking names, registering through his other companies, placing ridiculous prices, saying something that is not true later etc.
    People like Frank Schilling is better to avoid. It is beyond my understanding how some people can keep domains with Uniregistry… I am sure he spies on them, collect data etc.

  3. I think the .shop and .shopping should be given to one registrar and I see .shopping doing better.

  4. Gaz says:

    ICANN should have put all of these similar names into the same group. There should be just .shop or .shopping, not both.
    It just adds confusion, but at least it adds extra funds to the not-for-profit ICANN, eh?
    I think .shop is better than .shopping. The shorter the better when it comes to domain names – as long as it stays relevant.

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