CentralNic rebrands as Team Internet
Another well-known domain industry firm has rebranded itself around a forgettable, search-resistant company name.
CentralNic is now Team Internet, though it will continue to use “CentralNic” in its domains business.
The company has changed its primary domain from centralnic.com to teaminternet.com (a redirect is already in place) and its AIM ticker symbol from CNIC to TIG.
The brand comes from Team Internet the parking company, which CentralNic acquired for $48 million in 2019.
The change makes sense — CentralNic doesn’t even make a quarter of its revenue from domains any more. Today, most of its money comes from social media marketing arbitrage and domain monetization.
Even if it were still laser-focused on domains, the registrar side of the business is bigger and “Nic” doesn’t make much sense there.
The company started off selling third-level domains in pseudo-gTLDs such as uk.com and gb.com, before enthusiastically embracing new gTLDs as a back-end provider and subsequently getting into the registrar game.
As its 10-year IPO anniversary approaches this month CEO Michael Riedl observed in a press release that the company has grown from a $4 million annual business in 2013 to a $728 million business last year.
Also of note, Gavin Brown, who was with the company since pretty much the start and held various C-level positions on the technical side of the house over the years, left the company last week to join ICANN.
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