Recent Posts
- Com Laude ditches brand as $450 million deal closes
- No RDAP? No accreditation
- Fifth-largest gTLD not dead after all
- Half of registrar’s domains are abusive, ICANN says
- Burr joins PIR after leaving ICANN board
- Refunds galore as gTLD losers finally bow out
- .goo terminated as search engine closes down
- GoDaddy to offer domain blocking to people who don’t have trademarks
- Happy new year expected for domain industry, says ICANN
- Salesforce to apply for a dot-brand
- Team Internet looking to break up
- Noss to leave Tucows corner office
- Rubens Kühl has died
- Sinha angry with Chapman’s firing as ICANN vice chair
- Glitch redux: ICANN screws up new gTLD security again
- CentralNic claims second-largest TLD migration ever
- DNS issue at Amazon takes out major apps and sites
- .io sales almost double over three years
- Amazon delays book and fashion gTLDs
- Lindqvist shuffles the exec deck
- GoDaddy launches “ultra-premium” domain marketplace
- .mobi to get a new rival in .mobile
- Bye-bye .boomer! Blockchain players abandon new gTLD plans
- Decades-old US registrar gets a spanking
- love.you sold in apparent five-figure deal
- Bogus harassment complaints could get you an ICANN ban
- ICANN slaps open-mic ban on conflicted lawyers
- Final GTFO warning for 19 failed new gTLD bids
- Nominet opens $500,000 fund for open source projects
- Com Laude buys larger rival Markmonitor
- Epik took down Charlie Kirk doxing site
- Number of subsidized gTLD bidders far lower than thought
- Another registrar goes AWOL
- gTLD loses its second-largest registrar after breach
- Com Laude buys Fairwinds
- Unstoppable wants to be a registry back-end
- Sixteen new gTLD bids could face the firing squad
- Registry to release one-letter domains tomorrow
- New ICANN funding rules will cost smaller ccTLDs more
- .ai rival lines up gTLD bid
- Team Internet lays off 200
- Sixteen more orgs vie for cheap gTLDs, but…
- So who’s registering sunrise domains these days?
- Cloud gTLD gets launch dates
- Governments say new gTLD program “credibility” at stake
- NIXI planning doomed new gTLD bids
- AI experts replace Chapman on ICANN board
- RDRS may not be dead
- Single-letter .com lawsuit thrown out of court
- Golding challenges McCarthy for Nominet board seat
- Three applicants qualify for cheapo gTLDs
- Blockchain crisis looming for new gTLD next round
- Two more dot-brands leave Verisign for GoDaddy
- ICANN looking at new bulk reg rules
- Reseller loss hits Tucows’ DUM but not revenue
- GoDaddy counts cost of losing .co deal
- Wine producers worried about new gTLDs
- Goodyear tires of its dot-brand
- Team Internet loses Radix to Tucows
- ICANN’s “review of reviews” kicks off
- Huge registrars flee from RDRS
- Namecheap loses attempt to bring back .org price caps
- Registrar shamed for alleged crypto abuse neglect
- Poblete’s ICANN board seat safe
- .com off to strong start in Q3
- .my is growing like crazy
- ICANN settles $77 million sexual harassment suit
- Chinese domain spikiness ends in first half
- Registrars agree to higher ICANN fees
- ICANN to review reviews after review review request fails
- Got junk? June’s biggest gTLD growers do
- ICANN ditches Oman due to Middle-East conflicts
- ICANN’s mighty overlord flexes on transparency
- ICANN faces first pushback over DEI U-turn
- Loads of firms flunk out of next-round gTLD back-end program
- presidenttrump.xxx among thousands of dead .xxx domains suddenly springing to life
- One of the dumbest gTLDs just switched back-ends
- GoDaddy loses .co to Team Internet
- Governments erect bulk-reg barrier to new gTLD next round
- Little interest in cheapo gTLD program
- US government opposes most new gTLDs
- GoDaddy loses last Amazon business to Identity Digital
- Third Amazon gTLD launch dates revealed
- .TOP promises to play nice on DNS abuse
- Court denies ICANN’s #MeToo “cover up” attempt
- Launch dates for two more Amazon gTLDs revealed
- An end to “Club Med for geeks” ICANN?
- Some people paid premiums for .hot domain hacks
- .io questions in sharp focus as UK signs Chagos treaty
- Big .gdn registrar at risk
- ICANN “reaffirms its commitment to diversity and inclusion”
- ICANN kills off diversity and inclusion
- Kaufmann picked for ICANN board
- Conflicted? STFU under new ICANN rules
- .hot is for hookers? Amazon’s first premium regs revealed
- Gname adds another 200 registrars
- New Pope’s .com domain was registered the day Francis died
- Two deadbeat registrars get their ICANN marching orders
- DotMusic has sold a lot of names, but not many are turned on
- .med is a deeply weird gTLD, but it wants to be more normal
- ICANN cuts off money to UASG
- Web.com getting dumped
- .es and .pt riding out massive power outage
- .com is back as Verisign discounts bear fruit
- Dot-brand actually being used to get deleted
- Verisign gave Trump $100,000
- Private Whois requests hit new low after Tucows quits RDRS
- Zoom says GoDaddy took it down for hours
- The Soviet Union might be safe after all
- Google says its ccTLDs “are no longer necessary”
- Facebook thinks ICANN is a bit rubbish
- ICANN spending $365,000 a year on coffee and booze
- Regulator going after suicide site that even Epik banned
- .ai sees $600,000 auction sales in a month
- Pru trims its dot-brand portfolio
- UK’s Nigel Hickson has died
- .blog registry ordered to change name to Knock Knock RDAP There
- WordPress buys Canadian, swaps CentralNic for CIRA
- Latest ICANN salary porn ruins my terrible pun
- .co deal worth $77 million up for grabs
- I get a wrongful kicking as .su registry denies turn-off plan
- Sales and profits dip at Team Internet
- Four deadbeat registrars get terminated
- “No timeline” to retire Soviet Union from the DNS
- ICANN to kill off 60-day domain transfer lock
Com Laude ditches brand as $450 million deal closes
Kevin Murphy,
January 13, 2026, 08:44:24 (UTC),
Uncategorized
Com Laude is to become MarkMonitor following the closure of the acquisition announced last September.
While the purchase price has not been disclosed, the combined MarkMonitor reckons the business is now valued at $450.
Com Laude CEO Ben Crawford retains the corner office at the merged entity, while his MarkMonitor counterpart Stu Homan has been appointed COO.
MarkMonitor was an independent company when I launched this blog 16 years ago. Since then, it’s bounced between owners.
Thomson Reuters bought it in 2012. VC-backed Clarivate Analytics bought it four years later. Newfold Digital bought it in 2022 for $302.5 million.
Ditching the name Com Laude seems like a pretty sensible move; the name always came across a little silly. Who in the domain industry could possibly think it’s a good idea to brand themselves around a weak pun? Madness!
Domain Incite relies on support from readers like you to survive. Please consider making a one-off or recurring donation via PayPal. Please support Domain Incite, the independent source of news, analysis and opinion for the domain name industry and ICANN community.
Recent Comments