Burr joins PIR after leaving ICANN board

Community lifer Becky Burr has joined Public Interest Registry as senior policy advisor, the company announced today.

Burr, who at the US government was instrumental in the formation of ICANN in the late 1990s, recently completed a nine-year stint on ICANN’s board of directors, where she was one of the most active and visible participants.

Lawyer Burr previously headed policy for .biz registry Neustar, before its acquisition by GoDaddy, but she’s most recently been in private practice.

PIR, the non-profit .org registry, said Burr “will advise on a broad range of strategic policy matters and will engage with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) workstreams and global Internet governance matters.”

Comment Tagged: .org, pir

Refunds galore as gTLD losers finally bow out

There’s been a wave of withdrawals of new gTLD applications over the last couple of months after ICANN gave 15 companies their final notice that it was time to ask for a refund or lose their money forever.

But so far just seven unsuccessful applications from the 2012 round have been withdrawn, from the 19 that were eligible, according to my records.

Notably, all of the remaining applications for .mail, .corp and .home, strings that were banned on account of name collision risks, have been pulled. Google, Amazon and GMO Registry will all get partial refunds of their application fees.

Two applications for the fiercely contested .hotel have also been yanked, with Identity Digital and Radix getting their refunds. GRS Domains, Despegar and Fegistry still have not withdrawn, according to ICANN records.

ICANN had classed .hotel as a “already been delegated to other applicant” gTLD, which isn’t completely accurate. The gTLD is currently in pre-delegation testing, however.

There are plenty of other applications from 2012 that have not been withdrawn, despite the fact that the gTLD in question is already live and freely available for registration.

L’Oreal, for example, is still clinging on to its bid for .salon, despite the fact that Identity Digital has been running it for years and has about 4,000 names in its zone.

Similarly, Planet Dot Eco, DotConnectAfrica and Commercial Connect do not appear to has asked for refunds for their respective bids for .eco, .africa and .shop, despite all three being live and run by successful rival applicants for years.

Asia Green IT System has not withdrawn its bids for .islam, .halal, and .persiangulf, which were banned following government objections. AGIT was essentially kicked out of the industry when its business with five other Middle-East themed gTLDs comprehensively failed.

The 2012 round’s most-stubborn applicant, Nameshop, still has a live bid for .idn. Indian conglomerate Tata has also not pulled its bid for .tata, which failed on geographic similarity grounds.

In a resolution passed last September, ICANN’s board decided to give all of its remaining 2012-round applicants 90 days notice that they could withdraw or lose their money. It’s not clear when that 90-day period began.

1 Comment Tagged: ICANN, new gTLDs, withdrawals

.goo terminated as search engine closes down

The .goo gTLD is among a pair of dot-brand gTLDs to recently self-terminate.

goo was a 1990s-style search portal focused on the Japanese market and owned by local incumbent telco NTT. It eventually lost relevance and finally closed down for good at short notice last November.

Despite the similar branding, goo was unrelated to Google and in fact predated Google’s foundation by about a year, according to some accounts. It eventually turned to Google to power its search functionality.

NTT has asked ICANN to terminate its .goo registry contract and ICANN has given it the nod.

There was one active .goo domain, www.goo, which redirected to goo.ne.jp, its primary domain.

Joining .goo in self-termination is .wolterskluwer, one of those gTLDs that really makes me scratch my head for having never noticed its existence despite my daily exposure to vast amounts of gTLD data.

It’s owned by Wolters Kluwer, a large Dutch company that provides software for professionals such as doctors and lawyers. Unlike goo, the company appears to be in robust health but it never used its gTLD.

Comment Tagged: .goo, .wolterskluwer, dot-brands, ICANN, termination

GoDaddy to offer domain blocking to people who don’t have trademarks

GoDaddy’s registry arm wants to offer registrants the ability to block others from registering their brands in other TLDs, even if they don’t own a registered trademark.

In what could be a game-changer for the industry, the company has proposed a service called Domain Options, which could allow registrants to eventually claim rights to their domain across dozens or hundreds of gTLDs.

“The service will allow registered name holders to prevent registration of certain labels,” GoDaddy explained in a Registry Services Evaluation Process request filed with ICANN just before Christmas.

“Labels will be an exact match of the registered name holder’s second-level domain name label,” the RSEP says. “The number of labels a registrant can protect under Domain Options is limited to the following: only exact match labels, and only for registered domain names held by the registrant.”

Simply put, if you have registered example.beer, you would be able to pay a fee to prevent other people from registering domains such as example.biz, example.cooking and example.photo.

The latest RSEP covers 34 GoDaddy-run gTLDs: .abogado, .beer, .biz, .blackfriday, .boston, .casa, .club, .compare, .cooking, .courses, .dds, .design, .fashion, .fishing, .fit, .garden, .gay, .health, .ink, .law, .luxe, .miami, .photo, .rodeo, .select, .study, .surf, .tattoo, .vip, .vodka, .wedding, .wiki, .work, and .yoga.

But ICANN has already approved the Domain Options service for use in GoDaddy’s .horse gTLD, which was floated (presumably humorously) as a trial balloon earlier in December. The .horse contract has already been amended to include the service.

Registrants would be able to convert the blocked domains into actual registrations at a later date, or cancel the service altogether.

Third parties would also be able to request blocked domains to be unblocked through worryingly unspecified means.

Domain Options appears to be essentially a simplified clone of two-year-old GoDaddy-led service GlobalBlock, known in ICANN contractual parlance as the Label Blocking Service.

GlobalBlock enables trademark owners to pay substantial fees — from $6,499 a year at 101domain, for example — to block their marks across 710 extensions as a cheaper alternative to buying 710 defensive registrations at full price.

Registry pricing for Domain Options is not revealed in the RSEP, but it’s hard to imagine it enormously undercutting and therefore cannibalzing GlobalBlock.

Now that ICANN has given GoDaddy the nod for .horse, it seems inevitable that the other 34 gTLDs will also be approved, and I’d be very surprised if we don’t see a wave of similar RSEPs from other registries over the coming months.

2 Comments Tagged: domain options, globalblock, godaddy, ICANN, rsep

Happy new year expected for domain industry, says ICANN

ICANN’s revenue for 2026 is expected to be significantly above its earlier predictions, and it isn’t just because the Org cranked up its registry and registrar fees last year.

The budget for fiscal 2027, published shortly before Christmas, paints a picture of a much healthier domain industry than earlier thought.

The budget revises expectations for the Org’s current fiscal 2026 upwards in terms of transactions (meaning registrations, renewals and transfers) for gTLDs both new and old.

ICANN now expects legacy gTLD transactions for FY26, which ends June 30, to come in 7.7 million or 4.3% ahead of the predictions contained in the budget for the period its board approved last May.

Transactions are now expected to be 187.5 million versus the earlier estimate of 179.8 million.

It’s a similar story in new gTLDs, where transactions are now predicted at 43.1 million versus 33.1 million, a 10 million or 30.2% difference in estimates December versus May.

ICANN says in its draft FY27 budget (pdf) that the uptick became apparent about a year ago:

Beginning in the second half of FY25 [about a year ago], domain name transaction volumes began to increase, which was unexpected at the time of budgeting for FY25. Continued transaction volume growth and upward guidance from the industry resulted in an increased funding forecast for FY26, a trend that is expected to continue in FY27.

Due to this bullishness, the Org has no plans to raise its fees in FY27.

The growth spurt means that ICANN now thinks FY26 funding for operations will come in $11.6 million ahead of budget — $161.4 million compared to the $149.8 million it budgeted for six months ago.

The Org also expects to end its FY26 with about 400 more accredited registrars and about 20 more contracted registries than it thought. Likely due to drop-catcher registrars and dot-brand registries.

None of these figures include the upcoming new gTLD application round, which will not create any new fee-paying registries for some time.

For FY27, which begins July 1, ICANN is expecting transactions to hit 191.9 million and 44.4 million, growth of 2% and 3%, for legacy and new gTLDs respectively. That’s compared to the newly updated FY26 guidance.

ICANN is budgeting for $161.1 million in operations funding for FY27, down a bit on the $161.4 million it’s now predicting for FY26, due to lower application fees from new registrars seeking accreditation.

The draft budget is open for public comment until February 12.

Comment Tagged: budget, ICANN

Salesforce to apply for a dot-brand

Salesforce has become the most significant company to date to announce it plans to apply to ICANN for a new gTLD.

Specifically, the company plans to apply for a dot-brand, according to a disclosure made by David Lawrence, software engineering architect at Salesforce and IETF liaison on ICANN’s board of directors.

The disclosure came when the board approved the new gTLD program’s latest Applicant Guidebook at the conclusion of the ICANN 84 public meeting in Dublin last month.

While the IETF liaison is a non-voting role, he nevertheless recused himself from the AGB discussion, saying: “I work for an employer to apply for a brand TLD.”

While there are dozens of companies and organizations with public plans for new gTLDs, most of them are little-known brands associated with the blockchain space.

By contrast, Salesforce is, according to Wikipedia, the 61st-largest company in the world, with a market cap of $238 billion.

Comment Tagged: dot-brands, ICANN, new gTLDs, salesforce

Team Internet looking to break up

The return of CentralNic? Team Internet this week announced that it is seeking to break up the company, selling off its various divisions to different buyers.

The move follows devastating changes to Google’s advertising services, which led to 200 layoffs and a $140 million drop in revenue in the first half of this year.

“We are in active discussions regarding the divestment or formation of strategic partnerships for substantially all parts of the business in separate transactions,” the company said in a statement to the markets.

The company said it has already received “a number of inbound approaches”, adding that “discussions are most advanced” for the sale of its Domains, Identity & Software segment, which includes its registries and registrars.

It’s not clear whether we’re talking about potential industry consolidation or another private equity deal. Google’s move scuppered the planned sale of Team Internet as a whole to a PE group in March.

Google turned off its Adsense for Domains this year, making domain monetization substantially more difficult. It’s been replaced by Related Search on Content, which requires content to function.

Team Internet said that other Google policies designed to improve the quality of advertising have also slowed down its transition to the new model. It’s looking at ways it can diversify its revenue sources.

1 Comment Tagged: centralnic, google, team internet

Noss to leave Tucows corner office

Tucows CEO Elliot Noss has stepped down after over a quarter century in the role.

He will be replaced by David Woroch, currently CEO of the Tucows Domains business, reflecting the company’s newly revealed plan to sell off its Ting ISP business.

Noss will continue as a consultant for Ting as it seeks a buyer, though the company revealed it will quite possibly sell the unit at a loss.

He has been leading Tucows since its early days as a free software download site to becoming an ICANN-accredited registrar in the first wave in the late 1999.

“We created wholesale domain registration out of whole cloth which fundamentally changed the way domain names were distributed,” Noss told analysts last week.

Woroch will continue to run the domains business. Ivan Ivanov, CFO, will also be CEO of Ting.

Comment Tagged: tucows

Rubens Kühl has died

Rubens Kühl, a mainstay of the ICANN community and prolific commentator on the domain name industry, has died tragically young.

According to Brazilian ccTLD registry NIC.br, Rubens died November 3 at the age of 55, survived by his wife and two children.

Rubens was at NIC.br for 16 years, mostly at the registrar arm Registro.br, where he was product marketing manager.

He was a regular presence at ICANN meetings and served on the GNSO Council for a term from 2016.

“Rubens was a kind person, a brilliant technical guy, always open to sharing his extensive knowledge with anyone,” one Brazilian friend wrote on social media. “He will be missed not only here but by the whole Internet community around the world.”

“We will remember Rubens as an exceptional professional and a generous colleague who greatly contributed to our community,” said LACTLD, the regional ccTLD registry association.

ICANNWiki notes that he was known by some as “Mestre dos Magos” or “Dungeon Master”, due to his “vast knowledge, sharpness, and dry humor.”

I really liked Rubens. We only met in person a handful of times but he was by far the most prolific commenter on this blog and I always enjoyed reading what he had to say, even when we disagreed. This is the first time I’ve had to write an obituary with tears in my eyes.

7 Comments Tagged: ICANN, nic.br, obituary, registro.br

Sinha angry with Chapman’s firing as ICANN vice chair

ICANN chair Tripti Sinha appears to be a little pissed off that one of her fellow directors was essentially fired by the Nominating Committee, sparking a public confrontation with NomCom’s current chair.

Chris Chapman was replaced by the independent NomCom at the conclusion of his first three-year term earlier this year, which seems have prompted Sinha to voice her frustration.

Over the course of the week at ICANN 84 in Dublin, Sinha and Chapman himself have made a number of disparaging remarks about NomCom’s work, referring to it variously as “not impressive”, “disruptive” and “unpleasant”.

It has also transpired that Sinha and Chapman both abstained in protest at the October 14 board resolution that confirmed NomCom’s leadership for the 2026 round of selections.

Sinha made her first terse remark about Chapman’s departure on the stage at the welcoming ceremony at on Monday, calling it “premature”, but expanded on her comments during a meeting with the ccNSO on Tuesday and today’s open-mic public forum.

Saying she was reading out her abstention statement — censored so far by ICANN from its web site — she told the ccNSO that she was “disappointed” that the NomCom had not returned her vice chair for the second year in a row.

She said NomCom should put “board leadership experience, longevity, and continuity” as strong enough criteria when weighing its director options. She accused NomCom of “disregarding” the board’s guidance in this regard.

She alluded to her last vice chair Danko Jevtović, who was replaced in 2024 by that year’s iteration of NomCom after six years on the board.

“I abstain in protest to these decisions in back-to-back years, and implore that the NomCom re-evaluate its criteria for returning seasoned board leaders,” she concluded.

She repeated some of her comments at today’s public forum session, and backed up by former director Edmon Chung, who lost his seat after three years in 2024 due to NomCom’s selections.

But they were challenged by Tom Barrett, who was chair-elect of NomCom when Chapman was fired and was named chair earlier this month and who pointed out that the committee is independent and suggested ICANN should keep its nose out.

“I’m not going to discuss how the 2025 NomCom made its decisions, but without knowing why and how I think it is inappropriate for any board member, especially the chair, to question its due diligence or the fact that they have chosen incorrectly,” he said.

NomCom gives the board’s guidance an “enormous amount of weight”, he said, “but it is not exclusive.”

“No one that applies to the NomCom gets a golden ticket,” he said. “Reapplying candidates do not get a golden ticket, even if they have been appointed by two previous NomComs. Board leadership does not get a golden ticket even if they have been chair or vice chair.”

As for Chapman, he gave a bitter but detail-light recounting of his NomCom experience at a session with Asia-Pacific community members on Tuesday, bemoaning the fact that he wasn’t even picked for the back-up list.

“I think there is something fundamentally wrong with the accountability for NomCom,” he said, describing the circumstances surrounding his non-selection this year as “very odd” and that his interaction with NomCom “wasn’t pleasant”.

3 Comments Tagged: ICANN, icann 84, nomcom