NameCheap stops selling .xyz domains

NameCheap may have sold over a million .xyz domains, but apparently it will sell no more than that.
The registrar confirmed to DI this evening that it is no longer taking .xyz registrations. It declined to explain why.
It has also stopped selling .college and .rent domains — two other gTLDs owned by XYZ.com. Other new gTLDs are not affected.
It’s reportedly not accepting inbound transfers either, though existing domains can be renewed.
The switch-off happened at the end of last month, a NameCheap representative said.
That’s just one month after the registrar celebrated its one millionth .xyz registration, which XYZ.com commemorated with a blog post bigging up NameCheap’s user-customers.
The move is peculiar indeed. NameCheap is the third highest-volume .xyz registrar, behind West.cn and Uniregistry, responsible for about 15% of .xyz’s domains under management.
It’s also NameCheap’s biggest direct-selling gTLD by a considerable margin.
NameCheap is well-known as primarily an eNom reseller — it accounts for 28% of eNom’s domains under management and 18% of its revenue, largely from .com sales.
But with new gTLDs it has started selling domains on its own IANA ticker, meaning a direct connection to the registry and more gross profit for itself.
According to June’s registry reports, the million .xyz names accounted for roughly two thirds of NameCheap’s total DUM (not counting names sold via eNom).
The closet rival in its portfolio is .online, which provided the registrar with about 81,000 DUM.
The registrar added about 350,000 .xyz domains in June, a month in which it briefly offered them at $0.02 each.
At that time, the company reported technical issues that led to a 12-24 hour backlog of registrations to process, though its blog post announcing the problem appears to have since been deleted.
NameCheap has declined to comment on the reason for the surprise move, and XYZ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The fact that all of XYZ.com’s TLDs have been cut off suggests some kind of dispute between the two companies, but the fact that renewals can still be processed would suggest that NameCheap has not lost its .xyz accreditation.
More info if I get it…

GoDaddy spearheads Domain Connect spec

GoDaddy has published a new specification designed to make it easier for domain owners to quickly set up web sites using third-party site-building tools.
Its new Domain Connect Initiative is tailored for customers who do not know how to configure a DNS record and do not care to learn,according to Charles Beadnall, senior VP of domains.
While signing up for a participating site-building service, Shopify for example, customers currently have to either figure out how to manually reconfigure their DNS or get GoDaddy’s customer support to talk them through it.
GoDaddy currently receives tens of thousands of customer support calls every year related to these scenarios, Beadnall said.
But using Domain Connect, instead they will be able to simply enter their domain name with Shopify and, after authenticating with their registrar (via OAUTH), their domain’s DNS will be automatically configured to point to their new site.
This saves the customer’s time and GoDaddy’s money.
Under the hood, it works using a series of templates, authored by the service providers, which instruct the registrar or DNS provider in how to set up the domain to use the service, Beadnall said.
Due to the high risk of malicious exploitation, it’s not completely frictionless. Service provider templates must be manually pre-approved and white-listed by registrars, Beadnall said.
As the system does not involve domain registration or transfer it’s not really within ICANN’s policy wheelhouse, so the spec has instead been published via the IETF.
It has already been embraced by leading rival registrars eNom, Name.com and United Domains, as well as toolmakers including Microsoft, Shopify and Wix.
The announcement of Domain Connect was made a couple of weeks ago while I was off sick.
More information and documentation can be found on the Domain Connect web site.

Customers revolt as GoDaddy buys WordPress tools outfit

GoDaddy has acquired ManageWP, a provider of software for managing large numbers of WordPress sites, leading to hundreds of complaints from customers.
The two companies announced yesterday that the deal will see GoDaddy integrate ManageWP into its existing suite of WordPress services.
ManageWP said pricing will be unaffected by the move, and that its service will continue to be available to customers using other hosting providers.
Despite these assurances, a few hundred ManageWP customers have over the last 24 hours expressed their dismay in comments on the company’s site.
“This is like my very best friend announcing they’re marrying the arsehole in the office,” wrote one commenter.
ManageWP customers are generally web developers who manage WordPress sites for multiple clients.
The service gives them the ability, for free, to manage these sites from a single console, rather than having to log in to each one individually.
For an extra couple of bucks per site per month, features such as daily backups and white-label client reports are available.
ManageWP said its product development roadmap will remain unchanged, and that GoDaddy may offer some currently premium features to its hosting customers for free.
About 8% of ManageWP sites run on GoDaddy, the company said in a blog post.
Despite the positive spin, a great many customers appear to be deeply unhappy that the six-year-old company is joining the Arizona behemoth.
At time of writing, there are already over 300 comments on the ManageWP post announcing the deal, almost all negative.
The bulk of the comments center on GoDaddy’s allegedly poor customer support and its reputation for constantly trying to up-sell products and services.
Here’s a small sample of comments:

I cancelled my account immediately upon reading this news.
I have never dealt with a worse company in my professional life than GoDaddy, and will never do so again. One of my requirements for taking on a new client is moving them off GoDaddy completely.
…
My main concern from a business perspective is that you are giving away premium features free to GoDaddy hosting customers. That is a direct conflict with the people that offer ManageWP as a service to their clients. The services we provide now seem like they are worth less to our clients who host at GoDaddy.
…
Bummed about this. The minute I see an up-sell notification slammed in my face trying to get me to join the GoDaddy hosting plan, I’m outta here.

Some of the comments appear to be rooted in experiences during the Bob Parsons era at GoDaddy, which came to an end over five years ago.
Commenters cited “sexist” advertising (largely a thing of the past under current CEO Blake Irving), support for the controversial SOPA legislation (spearheaded by a long-gone general counsel) and that time Parsons shot an elephant.
Many commenters said they will stick around post-acquisition, such is the goodwill ManageWP has earned.
Several ManageWP employees engaged directly with their customers comments. In one response, head of growth Nemanja Aleksic wrote:

the feedback here is something that GoDaddy will definitely need to consider. I’ve been asked by several people why I don’t lock the comments or moderate heavily. This is why. Every single bad and good comment is a ManageWP user whose livelihood could be affected by the acquisition. And every single one of the deserves to be heard.

Personally, as somebody who manages multiple WordPress sites on GoDaddy, but has never used ManageWP, I’m rather looking forward to seeing what the company comes up with.

West.cn targets Engrish domainers with new .xyz site

West.cn, the Chinese registrar that has quickly become the highest-volume seller of new gTLD domains, has turned its attention to the English-speaking market.
The company has launched a new site at West.xyz, offering domains at some of the cheapest prices available, in English.
A .com can be obtained for the equivalent of $8.25 a year, while a .xyz costs about $1.20, according to the site. In .top, names are on sale for about $0.60.
West.xyz is still pricing its names in CNY, which may be off-putting to buyers in English-speaking markets.
The quality of the translation is currently quite poor also, verging on what razy lacists know as “Engrish”.
“Wish you a good luck in deals!” the front page offers.
“We hope to let all customers invest breezily and contribute to the domain industry with unremitting efforts,” the About page reads.
“In future, west.xyz will devote itself to the healthy and sustainable domain industry development and serve all customers wholeheartedly.”
The choice of .xyz as the domain for the new site is perhaps not surprising.
West.cn is XYZ.com’s biggest-volume channel partner, and recently put $1.5 million into subsidizing .xyz renewal fees.

Registrar CEO faces terrorism charges

The CEO of Turkey’s largest registrar is facing terrorism charges in the wake of last month’s coup attempt in the country, according to reports.
Abdullah Büyük of Istanbul-based FBS was deported from Bulgaria last Wednesday, according to local reports, having overstayed his visa.
Büyük went to Bulgaria last year and Turkey had unsuccessfully tried to get him extradited earlier this year.
Turkey’s Erdogan government, which has arrested thousands of people since the July 15 attempted coup, claims Büyük is a supporter of US-based exiled cleric Fethullah Gülen.
Turkey claims that Gulen is behind a terrorist group called FETÖ, which it believes carried out the attack.
Buyuk is reportedly an open supporter of Gulen, but it’s not entirely clear from English-language reports out there what he’s accused of doing.
I suspect it’s probably unrelated to domain names.
The decision to hand over Buyuk to Turkish authorities has proved controversial in Bulgaria, where some suspect it was a political gesture related to Europe’s migrant crisis.
FBS is believed to be Turkey’s largest registrar, with just shy of 600,000 domain names under management.

MarkMonitor to change hands in $3.55 billion deal

MarkMonitor owner Thomson Reuters is to sell of its IP division, which includes the brand-protection registrar, to private equity in a $3.55 billion all-cash deal.
The company said it will sell its Intellectual Property & Science business Onex Corporation and Baring Private Equity Asia.
MarkMonitor is of course a small part of that division. It also includes its Web of Science, Thomson CompuMark, Thomson Innovation, MarkMonitor, Thomson Reuters Cortellis and Thomson IP Manager services.
The unit reportedly has 4,000 employees and $1 billion in annual revenue.
Thomson Reuters said it will use $1 billion of the sale price to buy back shares and the rest to pay off debts.
The company revealed plans to get rid of the unit last November. Analysts said it was not core to its growth strategy.
Thomson Reuters acquired then privately held MarkMonitor for an undisclosed sum in 2012.

GoDaddy gets its dot-brand

GoDaddy has become a new gTLD registry with the delegation yesterday of .godaddy.
It’s a dot-brand, so domain name registrations will not be made available to the general public.
In one of the shortest mission statements found in new gTLD applications, the company describes .godaddy like this:

The mission or purpose of the .GODADDY gTLD is strictly for branding protection and internal use. The gTLD .GODADDY will give visitors to any .GODADDY site the assurance that they are truly dealing with Go Daddy and not an imposter or cybersquatter.

GoDaddy has not yet gone live with its nic.godaddy site.
It’s not the first domain name firm to get its own dot-brand. Notably, Neustar and Verisign own .neustar and .verisign.
It’s not the only registrar with a dot-brand, either. France’s OVH got there first with .ovh.
GoDaddy originally applied for two other gTLDs — .home and .casa — but withdrew their applications almost immediately after a shift of company strategy.

Google offers reseller widget, signs first partners

Google’s registrar, Google Domains, has started offering a widget to make it easier to become a reseller.
The Google Domains widget has already been deployed by five web site builders — Big Cartel, Duda, Selz, Square and Webflow — the company said.
These companies have evidently embedded the software — a chunk of Javascript — into their web sites.
Google said it handles payment and DNS configuration — pointing the newly registered domains to the appropriate service — on behalf of its partners.
More details are here and here. For some reason Google is using domains.withgoogle.com for this program, even though it has a perfectly serviceable dot-brand in the root.

Facebook, under Chinese court threat, transfers Instagram.com to its new registrar

It’s not quite cyberflight, but Facebook has transferred threatened domain name instagram.com to its newly acquired in-house registrar.
Whois records show that the domain, used for the popular photo-sharing social network, was moved from MarkMonitor to RegistrarSEC yesterday.
It emerged on Friday that Facebook had recently acquired RegistrarSEC.
So why the transfer?
It does not appear that the move is part of a wholesale transfer of domains — facebook.com, whatsapp.com, fb.com and all the other Facebook domains I checked are still with MarkMonitor.
Instead, I would speculate that it’s related to the lawsuit in China in which the family of a deceased cybersquatter are fighting for the return of the domain to their ownership.
Instagram acquired the name for $100,000 from the Guangdong-based Zhou family in January 2011, just a couple of months after Zhou Weiming, the now deceased patriarch, bought it from an American domainer.
According to a lawsuit (pdf) filed against the family in California by Instagram this January, Zhou’s widow and two daughters are suing the third daughter in a Chinese court for selling the domain without the proper authority.
They want the domain returned to them.
By transferring instagram.com to a registrar completely controlled by Facebook, the company has removed one huge risk factor from the Chinese lawsuit.
If MarkMonitor were to be served with a Chinese court order ordering the transfer of the domain to the Zhous, and it were to comply, the Instagram service used by millions could be held hostage by a group of known cybersquatters.
Now that the domain is at RegistrarSEC, Facebook gets the ability to refuse to comply with any such order.
This all begs the question of whether the deep-pocketed social network would go to the trouble of acquiring a registrar (with only 11 names to its accreditation) purely to provide a layer of insurance.
A fresh ICANN accreditation would be cheaper, but would take longer, and transferring to a different third-party registrar wouldn’t really solve the problem.
Instagram is predicted by one analyst to provide Facebook with $5.8 billion in annual revenue by the end of the decade.

Google registrar dumps .com for dot-brand

Google has started using its primary dot-brand gTLD for its registrar business.
The URL domains.google.com now bounces users to domains.google. The site sells domains from $12 a year with free Whois privacy.
Is this move a big deal for improving new gTLD awareness? I don’t think so.
Anyone visiting any major registrar’s storefront is likely to become aware that new gTLDs exist really rather quickly, regardless of the registrar’s own choice of domain.
A registrar using its dot-brand is not going to work wonders for new gTLD awareness in the general populace.
If Google were to start using .google for any of its non-domain projects, such as search.google, that would be different.
The company was already using registry.google for its registry business’s web site.