Top-level domains top 500

The number of live top-level domains on the internet has surpassed 500 for the first time.
The delegation yesterday of 12 new gTLDs — .archi, .consulting, .cooking, .country, .fishing, .haus, .商城, .horse, .miami, .rodeo, .vegas and .vodka — tipped the total TLD count to 507.
For the numbers geeks, here are some stats from the DI PRO database:

• 285 ccTLDs
• 222 gTLDs
• 60 IDN TLDs
• 24 IDN gTLDs
• 199 gTLDs delegated in the 2012 round
• 15 gTLDs delegated in previous rounds
• 8 legacy gTLDs
• 129 new gTLDs have started Sunrise periods
• 65 new gTLDs have started Trademark Claims periods
• 367 new gTLDs have ICANN contracts
• 1 new gTLD application is still in Initial Evaluation
• 6 new gTLD applications are still in Extended Evaluation
• 9.7 new gTLDs have been delegated per week, on average, since January 1, 2014
• 36 new gTLDs were delegated in March

Based on the rate that Verisign has been adding new gTLDs to the root recently, we should expect that to top 200 in the next few days. The number of new gTLDs could outstrip the number of ccTLDs next month.

Donuts buys out rival .place gTLD applicant

Donuts has won the .place new gTLD contention set after paying off rival applicant 1589757 Alberta Ltd.
The deal, for an undisclosed sum, was another “cut and choose” affair, similar to deals made with Tucows last August, in which the Canadian company named its price to withdraw and Donuts chose to pay it rather than taking the money itself.
1589757 Alberta has withdrawn its application for .place already.
The deal means Donuts now has 165 new gTLDs that are either live, contracted or uncontested.

ARI and Radix split on all new gTLD bids

Radix no longer plans to use ARI Registry Services for any of its new gTLDs, I’ve learned.
The company has already publicly revealed that CentralNic is to be its back-end registry services provider for .space, .host, .website and .press, but multiple reliable sources say the deal extends to its other 23 applications too.
I gather that the split with ARI wasn’t entirely amicable and had money at its root, but I’m a bit fuzzy on the specifics.
The four announced switches are the only four currently uncontested strings Radix has applied for.
Of Radix’s remaining active applications, the company has only so far submitted a change request to ICANN — which I gather is a very expensive process — on one, .online.
For the other 22, ARI is still listed as the back-end provider in the applications, which have all passed evaluation.
Radix is presumably waiting until after its contention sets get settled before it goes to the expense of submitting change requests.

Dodgy domainer owns 40% of .ceo’s new names

What do Mark Zuckerberg, Oprah Winfrey, Donald Trump, Jeff Bezos and the Saudi royal family have in common?
Their .ceo domain names all belong to the same guy, a registrant from Trinidad and Tobago who as of last night was responsible for 40% of hand-registered .ceo domains.
Andrew Davis has registered roughly 100 of the roughly 250 .ceo names sold since the new gTLD went into general availability on March 28, spending at least $10,000 to do so.
I hesitate to call him a cyberquatter, but I have a feeling that multiple UDRP panels will soon be rather less hesitant.
Oh, what the hell: the dude’s a cyberquatter.
Here’s why I think so.
According to Whois records, Davis has registered dozens of common given and family names in .ceo — stuff like smith.ceo, patel.ceo, john.ceo, wang.ceo and wolfgang.ceo.
So far, that seems like fair game to me. There are enough CEOs with those names out there that to register matching domains in .ceo, or in any TLD, could easily be seen as honest speculation.
Then there are domains that start setting off alarm bells.
zuckerberg.ceo? zuck.ceo? oprah.ceo? trump.ceo? bezos.ceo?
Sure, those are names presumably shared by many people, but in the context of .ceo could they really refer to anyone other than Mark Zuckerberg, Oprah Winfrey, Donald Trump and Jeff Bezos?
I doubt it.
Then there are a class of names that seem to have been registered by Davis purely because they show up on lists of the world’s wealthiest families and individuals.
The domains slim.ceo, walton.ceo, and adelson.ceo match the last names of three of the top ten wealthiest people on the planet; arnault.ceo matches the name of France’s second-richest businessman.
getty.ceo, rockefeller.ceo, hearst.ceo, rothschild.ceo… all family names of American business royalty.
Then there’s the names of members of actual royalty, the magnificently wealthy Saudi royal family: alsaud.ceo, saud.ceo and alwaleed.ceo.
Still, if Davis had registered any single one of these names he could make a case that it was a good faith registration (if his name was Walton or Al Saud).
Collectively, the registration strategy looks very dodgy.
But where any chance of a good-faith defense falls apart is where Davis has registered the names of famous family-owned businesses where the name is also a well-defended trademark.
bacardi.ceo… prada.ceo… beretta.ceo… mars.ceo… sennheiser.ceo… shimano.ceo… swarovski.ceo… versace.ceo… ferrero.ceo… mahindra.ceo… olayan.ceo…
There’s very little chance of these surviving a UDRP if you ask me.
Overall, I estimate that at least half of Davis’ 100 registrations seem to deliberately target specific high net worth individuals or famous brands that are named after their company’s founder.
The remainder are generic enough that it’s difficult to guess what was going through his mind.
On his under construction web site at andrewdavis.ceo, Davis says:

I am the owner of Hundreds of the Best .CEO Domains available on the web.
My collection comprises of the Top Premium .CEO Domains (in my opinion).
My list of domains contains the First or Last names of well over 1 Billion people around the world.
I offer Email and Web Link Services on each of these sites, so that these Domains can be shared with many people around the world, particularly CEOs, Business Owners and Leaders, or those aspiring to become one.

On each of Davis’ .ceo sites, he offers to sell email addresses (eg contact@bacardi.ceo) for $10 a month and third-level domain names (eg blog.walton.ceo) for $5 a month.
A UDRP panelist is going to take this as evidence of bad faith, despite Davis’ disclaimer, which appears on each of his web sites. Here’s an example from bacardi.ceo:

This Website (Bacardi.CEO) is NOT Affiliated with, nor refers to, any Trademark or Company named “Bacardi”, that may or may not exist.
This Website does NOT refer to any Specific Individual Person(s) named “Bacardi”.
This Website aims to provide Services for ANY Person named “Bacardi”, particularly: CEOs, Business Owners and Leaders.
Bacardi.CEO is an Independent and Personal Project/Service of Andrew Davis.

I must admit I admire his entrepreneurship, but I fear he has stepped over the line into cybersquatting that a UDRP panelist will have no difficulty at all recognizing.
Davis has already been hit with a Uniform Rapid Suspension complaint on mittal.ceo, presumably filed on behalf of billionaire Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal and/or his company ArcelorMittal.
It’s not clear from the name alone whether mittal.ceo is a losing domain under URS’ higher standard of evidence, but I reckon the pattern of registrations described in this blog post would help make for a pretty convincing case that would put it over the line.
I should add, in fairness to .ceo registry PeopleBrowsr, that the other 60% of its zone, judging by Whois records, looks pretty clean. Small, but clean.

Slow start for .ceo with fewer than 400 names sold

The new .ceo gTLD has had a disappointing launch.
In the first 30 hours of general availability, which began on Friday afternoon, the TLD has managed to scrape just 378 registrations, according to the latest zone file.
That includes 100 names that were registered during the sunrise period.
Jodee Rich, CEO of PeopleBrowsr, the .ceo registry, told DI that the company sold about 40 premium names at $999 per year on the first day and that revenue for the first six hours was about $100,000.
The baseline retail price for .ceo names is $99.
There is a tiered pricing structure, and Rich said that only four out of its 40-something accredited registrars were ready to handle it, which may have impacted sales.
He added that .ceo has over 3,000 pre-registrations which he hopes to start seeing convert over the coming days.
Nevertheless, 378 domains is a poor showing by any measure.
On day one of GA, it was the eighth-fastest growing new gTLD by domain volume. Today, it’s ranked 52nd out of the 52 new gTLDs that have gone to full, baseline pricing general availability.

.email sells almost 10,000 names on day one

Donuts new gTLD .email sold 9,636 registrations yesterday, its first partial day of general availability at standard registry pricing.
The TLD became the seventh largest by volume, with 11,286 names under management.
The other four new gTLDs — all Donuts’ — that hit the same pricing threshold yesterday fared less well, with between 5,391 (.solutions) and 909 (.builders) names registered.
Here’s a bit more data from DI PRO. Click to enlarge.

A total of 26,239 new names appeared in 147 new gTLD zone files this morning, of which 22,220 (about 85%) came from these five newly available options.

Despite IRP, .africa gets a new gTLD contract

ICANN has signed a Registry Agreement with ZA Central Registry for the new gTLD .africa, despite the string being subject to a legal dispute.
The RA was signed with the South African applicant on Monday.
Rival .africa applicant DotConnectAfrica filed an Independent Review Process complaint against ICANN in January, claiming the rejection of its bid, which came because it lacked government support, was “unfair, discriminatory, and lacked appropriate due diligence and care”.
Now that ZACR is a contracted party — meaning that .africa is likely to hit the root in two or three months — it will be very difficult for DCA to get appropriate recompense should it win the IRP.
Fortunately for ICANN, I think there’s a better chance of me getting elected Pope.

CentralNic kicks out ARI as back-end for four new Radix gTLDs

CentralNic has replaced ARI Registry Services as the exclusive back-end registry services provider for four new gTLDs.
Radix, the new gTLD portfolio applicant formerly affiliated with Directi, will use CentralNic “exclusively” for .press, .host, .website and .space, according to a press release this morning.
ARI was originally listed on Radix’s applications as the technical services provider for all four, but as a result of change requests submitted in January ARI is out and CentralNic is in.
All four were either originally uncontested strings or have since been won by Radix at auction.
The news of the switch follows the announcement last month that CentralNic has also become a “preferred” back-end for portfolio applicant Famous Four Media, alongside ARI and Neustar.

Neustar pays $109 million for .CO Internet

Four years after relaunching the Colombian ccTLD .co as a global top-level domain, .CO Internet has been acquired by its long-time partner Neustar for $109 million.
The .co registry will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Neustrar, which already runs .biz and .us, following the close of the deal.
.CO recorded revenue of $21 million in 2013, of which Neustar took $4 million as its back-end registry provider, according to Neustar.
The .co zone currently stands at about 1.6 million names, according to the companies. That seems to mean it added roughly 200,000 net new names in 2013, judging by its 2012 numbers.
The company relaunched .co in 2010, having jointly bid with Neustar for a Colombian government contract.
It was the last truly impressive TLD launch, with 200,000 registrations on day one and over 1 million in its first year.
While the space is still stuffed with speculators, unlike some other TLDs .co is also widely, visibly used by its intended audience — start-ups and entrepreneurs.
.CO is known primarily for its marketing acumen — some new gTLD registries could learn a thing or two — which Neustar CEO Lisa Hook raised as a selling point in today’s press release:

By combining .CO Internet’s innovative domain marketing capabilities with Neustar’s distribution network and technical resources, we will be able to broaden our registry services and the .co brand worldwide, while creating shareholder value.

Neustar expects the deal to close within a month.

TLD Registry sells 20k+ IDN gTLD names to Chinese gov

TLD Registry has sold 20,452 new gTLD domain names to the Chinese government as it prepares to launch .中文网 (“.chinesewebsite”) and .在线 (“.online”) tomorrow.
The deal, signed this week with the Service Development Center of the State Council Office for Public Sector Reform (SCOPSR) is for 10,226 names in each gTLD.
The domains include the Chinese-script names of every city in China with a population of over 200,000, as well as counties, municipalities and other regional names.
Strings that translate to things like “invest in [place name]” and “tourism [place name]” have also been registered to the government in both TLDs, according to the company.
It looks like this is the first significant anchor tenant deal we’ve seen in the new gTLD program.
Assuming China actually uses these names, it could be great publicity for the new registry’s gTLDs. The government has a policy of transitioning all of its services to fully IDN.IDN domains.
If not, it still means that both gTLDs stand to launch with over 10,000 names in each zone file on day one, even before regular registrants have had a chance to buy them.
The company is also set to auction a bunch of premium names in both namespaces on Friday simultaneously via Sedo and a live event at a private members’ club in Macau.
I’m posting this from Hong Kong airport, en route to the Macau event. As a matter of disclosure: TLD Registry is paying for my flights and accommodation.