Typo .com on sale for $94 million

Somebody has listed what they call the “Saudi National Domain” for sale for a laughable $94 million, despite it apparently being a typo.

The domain name in question is saudiarabiya.com, according to a press release that crossed the wires this week.

You’ll notice the addition of a Y to the traditional English spelling/transliteration of Arabia, which is something the release doesn’t shy away from acknowledging.

The would-be seller says it’s “the correct Arabic spelling of ‘Arabia,’ using the letter ‘y.'”, pointing to Arabic TV news channel Al-Arabiya as an example of this spelling.

The problem is, “Saudi Arabiya” doesn’t seem to be an official transliteration of the country’s name, and you’d be hard pressed to find examples of anyone referring to it in that way.

Some European languages do spell the “Arabia” component of the name with a Y, but none appear to call it “Saudi Arabiya”.

The registrant wants to sell the name via Escrow.com, and is offering buyers the chance to lease the name for a year for $4 million before handing over the full asking price.

Comment Tagged: escrow.com, saudiarabiya.com

First two proper registrars join Web3 Domain Alliance

Two significant ICANN-accredited registrars have signed up to a body that commits them to, among other things, endorse the position that blockchain-based alt-root TLDs have trademark rights to their strings.

United-Domains and MarkMonitor are among about 50 companies now listed as new members of the Web3 Domain Alliance, the association created late last year by well-financed alt-root registry Unstoppable Domains.

The other companies listed appear to be players in the crypto/blockchain/Web3/NFT space, rather than the traditional domain name industry.

The moves by the two registrars are significant because the Alliance’s platform stands to be a significant thorn in ICANN’s side when it finally opens up the next new gTLD application round, which could happen in the next couple years.

According to the Alliance’s web site, members have to commit not only to promote the market acceptance and interoperability of blockchain alt-root domains, but also:

To advocate for the policy position that NFT domain registry owner-operators create trademark rights in their web3 TLDs through first commercial use with market penetration.

This could be a big problem in the next new gTLD round, as current ICANN policy proposals, developed before the likes of Unstoppable became such a big deal, do not specifically account for claims by alt-root providers.

Trademark owners will be able to challenge gTLD applications if the applied-for string matches their mark, but historically it’s not really been possible for companies to obtain trademarks on TLDs.

Along with the membership announcement, Unstoppable has said that it will not enforce its patents against any Alliance member that implements its standards, provided the member agrees not to enforce its own patents.

United-Domains is part of United-Internet, the same company that runs IONOS, 1&1, Sedo and InternetX.

MarkMonitor, since November, has been part of Newfold Digital, the parent of Network Solutions, Web.com, Register.com, BigRock, SnapNames, and others.

Comment Tagged: alt-roots, blockchain, markmonitor, new gTLDs, united domains, unstoppable, web3 domain alliance

IDNs — small and shrinking

It’s no secret that internationalized domain names haven’t exactly been flying off the shelves since they were first introduced over a decade ago, but the latest ICANN data shows registration volumes are shrinking.

According to its second annual IDN Progress Report (pdf), there were 1.52 million IDN names across all gTLDs (including Latin-script TLDs) at the end of 2022, which was down 2.94% from a year earlier.

ICANN pointed out that this is actually a slower decline than in previous years, where the average shrinkage from 2019 to 2021 was 11.36%.

Chinese-script names were perhaps unsurprisingly the most common, representing 50% of the total, with Latin coming second-place with 26%. Some Latin-script languages need representing as IDNs to accommodate diacritics like cedillas and umlauts.

Korean, Cyrillic and Japanese followed in popularity. The multitude of scripts used in India fall into the “other” category, with less than 1% of the total — fewer than Hebrew — despite the country’s vast population.

The relatively low number of registrations is spread across ASCII and IDN gTLDs. Ninety-one of the 1,172 total gTLDs are IDN gTLDs and 462 gTLDs support IDNs at the second-level, regardless of top-level script.

ICANN’s report does not cover ccTLDs, presumably because the zone files are not usually readily available, but we know from ccTLD registry that their own IDNs can be somewhat popular.

Russia reports 681,000 .РФ names today, while China recorded 190,000 .中国 names mid-2022.

ICANN has made IDNs and universal acceptance a cornerstone of its current strategic plan and there’s likely to be a push for IDN applications in the next new gTLD rounnd.

Comment Tagged: ICANN, idns

“Everyone thinks you’re a spammer” if you buy keyword domains, says Googler

A veteran Google “Search Advocate” has said he’s “not a fan” of keyword-rich domain names, partly because they’ll make people think you’re a spammer.

John Mueller responded to a Reddit thread from a user wondering whether it’s worth splashing out $2,000 on a two-keyword .com domain for his new business.

Mueller responded, according to Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Journal:

I’m not a fan of keyword-keyword domains, but YMMV [your mileage may vary]. Random thoughts:

everyone thinks you’re a spammer

changing business focus, or even expanding, is harder

you have no brand name, there’s nothing that people can search for which “obviously” should show your site. You’re always competing, you’re not building value with long-term users.

Comment Tagged: google, seo

New gTLDs report came in under budget

ICANN spent less than expected carrying out the Operational Design Phase of the new gTLD program last year, according to financials published yesterday.

The Org’s second fiscal quarter (fourth calendar quarter) report shows it spent $6.8 million on the ODP, which ended in mid-December with the delivery of the Operational Design Assessment.

That’s under the low-end of the $7 million to $9 million ICANN’s board of directors had approved for its budget.

The report also reveals that roughly 15 full-time equivalents, mostly ICANN staff, spent a total of over 27,000 hours to produce the ODA report, which is currently awaiting board approval.

The financial report shows that ICANN spent about $400,000 more than expected on its AGM in Kuala Lumpur last October. This, it said, was due to higher airfare costs, partially offset by 45 fewer funded travelers than expected attending.

Overall, ICANN received about $1 million more in funding than it expected, at $76 million, due to not losing as many registrars as expected, and its FY23 spend to date was $67 million, about $5 million under budget due to “lower than planned professional services and personnel costs”.

It had an average 399 staff over the period and ended the year with total assets of $558 million, $438.3 million of which is invested.

Comment Tagged: financials, ICANN

I let ChatGPT cover GoDaddy’s Q4 earnings for me

Living and working in the UK, it’s always a bit irritating that the major, public, US-based domain name companies report their earnings after New York market close, which is usually 2130 UTC, 9.30pm my time.

GoDaddy is one such company, and GoDaddy reported its fourth-quarter and full-year results about an hour ago, so it seemed like a great opportunity to test out ChatGPT’s ability to write a news story for me when I’m too tired and emotional to do so myself.

I primed the tool by asking: “Could you write a news story in the style of Domain Incite if I provide you with some source material?”.

It responded: “Certainly! Please provide me with the source material and I will create a news story in the style of Domain Incite.”

I then pasted the almost entire GoDaddy earnings release, everything from the beginning of the headline to the beginning of the paragraph that begins “GoDaddy’s consolidated financial statements…”

It produced:

Sure! Here’s a news story in the style of Domain Incite based on the provided source material:

GoDaddy reported 7.2% YoY revenue growth in 2022, amounting to $4.1 billion, and normalized EBITDA of $1 billion, up 16.1% YoY, representing 25% margin. This was despite macroeconomic challenges. CEO Aman Bhutani credited GoDaddy’s innovative product roadmap for the success. “As we enter 2023, we are excited about the full launch of our commerce offerings empowering customers to transact everywhere seamlessly,” he said. CFO Mark McCaffrey said GoDaddy had taken steps to align priorities and cost structure to maintain the strong financial results, while investing in long-term initiatives. Net cash provided by operating activities rose by 18.1% YoY to $979.7 million, and free cash flow by 13.2% YoY to $968.6 million. Unlevered free cash flow increased 14.2% YoY to $1.1 billion.

In Q4 2022, GoDaddy signed a significant partnership agreement with merchant services provider FIS Worldpay to sell its OmniCommerce solutions for US-based small business customers and bank partners. GoDaddy also launched Managed WooCommerce Stores solution, which allows entrepreneurs to sell in-person and across marketplaces and social channels through a single unified dashboard. GoDaddy’s premier payments platform is now automatically attached to its domains and website building plans, enabling customers to transact seamlessly. In Q4 2022, gross merchandise volume in GoDaddy’s Commerce offerings reached $28 billion, up 10% YoY, while gross payments volume was $760 million. ARR for the Create and Grow group of products, including Websites + Marketing, Managed WordPress, Sellbrite, and GoDaddy Studios, surpassed $445 million, growing 8% YoY in Q4 2022. Overall, annualized recurring revenue (ARR) for applications & commerce grew 9% YoY to $1.3 billion in Q4 2022, while ARR from GoDaddy’s Core Platform grew 1% YoY to $2.3 billion.

Since the launch of its current share buyback authorization in 2022, GoDaddy’s share count has reduced by 10%. The company aims to participate in its customers’ success and drive long-term value for shareholders.

I have not read the ChatGPT story pasted above. I don’t know how accurate it is. I don’t know whether it follows DI’s house style (though I can tell from the length of the paragraphs that it’s got at least one thing wrong).

Based on my previous experience with this tool, I assume it’s a load of bollocks.

What do you think? Should I use ChatGPT to help write articles in future?

Comment Tagged: chatgpt, earnings, godaddy

ICANN to approve next new gTLD round next month (kinda)

ICANN’s board of directors is sending mixed signals about the new gTLD program, but it seems it is ready to start approving the next round when the community meets for its 76th public meeting in Mexico next month.

It seems the board will approve the GNSO’s policy recommendations in a piecemeal fashion. There are some undisclosed sticking points that will have to be approved at a later date.

Chair Tripti Sinha wrote this week that the board “anticipates making incremental decisions leading up to the final decision on opening a new application window for new gTLDs”.

While “many” recommendations will be approved at ICANN 76, the board “will defer a small, but important, subset of the recommendations for future consideration”.

The good news is that the board is erring towards the so-called “Option 2” sketched out in Org’s Operational Design Assessment, which would be much quicker and cheaper than the five-year slog the ODA primarily envisaged.

Sinha wrote:

the Board has asked ICANN Org to provide more detail on the financing of the steps envisioned in the ODA, and to develop a variation of the proposed Option 2 that ensures adequate time and resources to reduce the need for manual processing and takes into account the need to resolve critical policy issues, such as closed generics.

The closed generics issue — where companies can keep all the domains in a generic-term gTLD all to themselves — did not have a community consensus recommendation, and the GNSO Council and Governmental Advisory Committee have been holding bilateral talks to resolve the impasse.

There’s been an informal agreement that some closed generics should be allowed, but only if they serve the global public interest.

A recent two-day GAC-GNSO discussion failed to find agreement on what “generic” and “global public interest” actually mean, so the talks could be slow going. The group intends to file an update before ICANN 76.

Comment Tagged: closed generics, gac, gnso, ICANN, icann 76, new gTLDs, oda, odp, subpro

Earthquake survivors given domain renewal holiday

ICANN has announced that registrants in earthquake-hit Türkiye and Syria could have their domains protected from expiration.

It’s triggered part of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement that permits registrars to avoid deleting names owned by registrants unable to renew due to “extenuating circumstances”.

ICANN has declared last week’s quakes, which have claimed tens of thousands of lives, such a circumstance.

The move requires registrar participation to be truly effective. There are nine registrars based in Türkiye, none in Syria, but the offer is valid to all accredited gTLD registrars.

ICANN has exercised this power three times before — after Hurricane Maria, during the Covid-19 outbreak, and last year’s Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Comment Tagged: earthquake, ICANN, raa, renewals, syria, turkiye

GoDaddy to lay off hundreds

GoDaddy has become the latest big tech firm to announce huge layoffs, with hundreds of employees set to be let go.

The company said last week it is laying off 8% of its staff. This equates to more than 500 job losses, based on 6,800+ the company’s web site reports.

Employees at three brands are most-affected — Media Temple, Main Street Hub and 123 Reg — with the former two also set to disappear as independent brands.

Main Street Hub is social media marketing firm from Texas that GoDaddy acquired in 2018. Media Temple is a hosting provider from California that GoDaddy acquired in 2013.

123 Reg is a UK-based registrar brand that was part of Host Europe Group until GoDaddy bought it in 2017. GoDaddy says the brand will remain, but some roles will be terminated. Staff will find out who’s staying and who’s going before the end of the month.

GoDaddy CEO Aman Bhutani blamed growth hindered by the “uncertain macroeconomic environment” for the moves.

The company, which reported revenue up 7.2% at $1.03 billion and a $100 million profit in the third quarter, is due to report its fourth quarter and full-year earnings this evening.

Comment Tagged: earnings, financials, godaddy, layoffs

Verisign looking at ChatGPT-like name-spinner

Verisign is “looking closely” at overnight AI chatbot sensation ChatGPT to see if its technology can be incorporated into its name-spinner tool, NameStudio.

CEO Jim Bidzos told analysts last week: “ChatGPT and NameStudio will actually help you find a similar and equally good or maybe even better name and we’re looking closely at ChatGPT to see about using its capabilities to enhance what NameStudio does.”

He dismissed suggestions such AI tools might negatively impact domain names, comparing it to misplaced concerns about voice assistants (presumably meaning the likes of Alexa and Siri).

Last month, I blogged about a new name-spinner web site using the same AI technology as ChatGPT to come up with name suggestions and speculated that this will likely become the industry standard before too long.

Comment Tagged: ai, chatgpt, name spinning, namestudio, verisign