Recent Posts
- D3 announces seventh blockchain gTLD client
- Taylor Swift applies for her .post domain
- .ad domains to go global soon
- Single-letter .com case back in court
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- New gTLD lottery to return in 2026
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- Report: Monster “misappropriated” millions from Epik
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- D3 announces fourth crypto new gTLD client
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- ICANN insists it is working on linkification
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- 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
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- Team Internet says revenue beat estimates
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- .ru domains fly off the shelf as Western sanctions bite
- ICANN picks its first ever Supreme Court
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- ICANN approves domain takedown rules
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- First bits of new gTLD Applicant Guidebook expected next week
- ICANN bans closed generics for the foreseeable
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- After 14 years, ICANN practices what it preaches on IDNs
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- .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]
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- ICANN finds new home for Lebanon’s TLD after founder’s death
- ICANN begs people to use its new Whois service
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- Over 50,000 .ai domains sold in three months
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- ICANN predicts flattish 2025 for domain industry
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- Have your say on police domain takedown powers
- Most registrars are shunning ICANN’s new Whois system
Tucows buys UNR’s registry business as Schilling bows out
Tucows has acquired UNR’s registry business, the latest in the piecemeal sale of the old Uniregistry by founder Frank Schilling.
The Canadian registrar said it is taking on the technology platform as well as 10 UNR staffers.
Not many details of the deal, not even the purchase price, have been revealed.
“While I am slowly getting out of the industry, it’s important to me to know that my businesses are being left in the best hands,” Schilling said in a brief Tucows press release.
The deal gives Tucows a registry component to match rival GoDaddy, which acquired Neustar’s registry business last year, and makes the company the latest to throw itself into the vertically integrated domain space.
GoDaddy acquired Uniregistry’s registrar business last year also.
The UNR registry was originally Internet Systems Consortium’s but was acquired by UNR towards the beginning of the current new gTLD cycle.
It’s not currently clear which TLDs, if any, continue to run on the UNR platform. The company auctioned off 20 gTLDs in May, making $40 million, but did not disclose the buyers and none of the ICANN contracts have yet changed hands.
Certain ICANN approvals are needed before the deal closes, Tucows said.
Neither company answered DI’s questions about which TLDs are making the move, but Tucows VP Dave Woroch told us:
We are purchasing their registry platform and technology/intellectual property. In addition to servicing a number of registry operators, this platform will be applicable or beneficial to our broader registrar business, and we are looking at how we can implement some of that technology into our registrar platform. Along with this purchase of the registry platform, we have the unique opportunity to bring on a very experienced team of software engineers with specific expertise, and that will benefit our domain business at a time when it has been particularly challenging to add talent…
Tucows will be actively marketing itself as a backend registry provider, both for gTLDs and ccTLDs, and if there is another round of new gTLDs, we would fully expect to participate there as well.
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