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- .ai up to 425,000 domains
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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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- ICANN picks its first ever Supreme Court
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- ICANN picks the domain it will never, ever release
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- Has Epik gone “woke”?
- First bits of new gTLD Applicant Guidebook expected next week
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- Weak demand for private Whois data, ICANN data shows
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- ICANN begs people to use its new Whois service
- Shiba Inu outs itself as crypto new gTLD applicant
- Over 50,000 .ai domains sold in three months
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- Registries and registrars vote ‘Yes’ to new DNS abuse rules
- ICANN predicts flattish 2025 for domain industry
- Fast-growing Gname buys another 150 registrars
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- Have your say on police domain takedown powers
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- Nominet to take over .gov.uk
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- ICANN accused of power grab over $271 million auction fund
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- Two more dot-brands bite the dust
- Google sells five-figure AI domain and six-figure .ing hack
- .blackfriday is still a bit rubbish
- Internet Naming Co acquires five more gTLDs
- Domain universe grows despite .com drag
Another registrar seemingly vanishes
An accredited registrar appears to have gone bust after its parent company failed.
ICANN has sent a breach notice to Nimzo 98, which while registered as an LLC in the US appears to be Indian-operated, saying the company has not paid its fees and the Compliance folk haven’t been able to reach management since December.
The notice also complains that the company isn’t providing a Whois service as required, which may be a polite way of saying that the entire web site is down — it’s not resolving properly for me.
Digging into the data a little, it seems Nimzo was the in-house registrar of a company called Houm that, according to its press releases, was operating some kind of privacy-oriented social network slash cloud storage service.
Part of Houm’s offering was a personal domain name, which came bundled as part of the monthly service fee.
When Houm seriously started promoting its service last year, it appears to have led to a spike in registrations via Nimzo. Most of its domains were concentrated in new gTLDs such as .live, .xyz, .earth, .world and .space.
Having consistently registered no more than a couple hundred gTLD names per month for years, there was a sudden spike to over 5,000 in July and 12,000 in August, peaking Nimzo’s total domains at 21,000 that month.
But then, in October, the registrar deleted almost all of its names. It went from 21,000 domains under management in August to 190 at the end of October. These were not grace-period deletes, so fees would have been applicable.
Houm’s web site at houm.me also appears inoperable today, showing a server error when I access it, and its Twitter account has been silent since last August.
ICANN has given Nimzo until May 22 to pay up or lose its accrediation.
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