Google beats Microsoft to .docs

Google and Microsoft seem to have settled their contention set for the .docs new gTLD, with Google emerging the victor.
Microsoft withdrew its application for .docs this week.
It’s not clear how the deal was made, but Google is known to have participated in private auctions for other strings.
Google Docs is of course Google’s office document service.
Microsoft also has a Docs service, a collaboration with Facebook at Docs.com, but it seems to have been in beta since April 2010 and, by the looks of the site, isn’t what you’d call a success.

1 Comment Tagged: .docs, google, Microsoft, new gTLDs

ICM buys .sex for up to $3 million

ICM Registry, the .xxx domain name registry, may have paid as much as $3 million for the .sex gTLD.
Internet Marketing Solutions Limited, the only other applicant for .sex, withdrew its application this week.
Word is that ICM forked out somewhere between $2 million and $3 million for exclusive rights to the string.
I hear it was a private deal, not an auction organized by a third party.
I wonder whether the price was affected by the revelation by ICANN earlier this month that it considers porn-related gTLD strings “sensitive” for no particular reason.
It’s quite low, considering that sex.com sold for $13 million and sex.xxx sold for $3 million just a couple of months ago.
ICM now is the only applicant for .sex, .porn and .adult. It plans to grandfather existing .xxx registrants into the new namespaces, assuming ICANN doesn’t throw a spanner in the works.

1 Comment Tagged: .sex, ICANN, icm registry, internet marketing solutions

Crazy housing market reflected in .london landrush

The world’s insatiable appetite for property in London is being reflected in applications for domain names during .london’s landrush, according to the registry.
Just a few days before the landrush ends, over 30 applications have been filed for properties.london, Dot London said, and apartments.london and houses.london “are among the most sought after” domains.
The registry said:

Trades that serve the property industry are also proving popular, with addresses such as removals.london and scaffolding.london receiving numerous applications, while there are three times as many applications for estateagent.london as for lettingagent.london.

The property market in London is utter madness right now. The average price of a house here is £567,392 ($963,275), up over 12% on a year ago, according to Zoopla.
I could buy a three-bedroom semi-detached house in the town of my birth for the price of a parking space in London.
Apartments literally smaller than a snooker table were selling for £90,000 ($152,000) two years ago.
It’s madness, I tell you, madness.
While much of the house price boom can be blamed on overseas investors, many of whom leave their properties vacant, Dot London is at least giving the city’s residents special treatment in .london.
The landrush is being carried out simultaneously with the sunrise period. Both commenced April 29 and end July 31.
Trademark owners get priority, followed by applicants with London addresses. In the event domains are contested by multiple applicants with the same priority, there’ll be a private auction.
Dot London says that the most-popular landrush domain is nightlife.london, completely unrelated to property. It has more than 40 applications.

8 Comments Tagged: .london, dot london, landrush

Amazon and Google deal on .talk, .play, .drive and others

Google and Amazon have started making deals to settle their new gTLD contention sets.
Google won three contention sets against Amazon this week, judging by the latest withdrawals, while Amazon won two.
Amazon won .talk and .you after Google, the only other applicant, withdrew.
Neither company appears to have a “You” brand, unless you count YouTube, but the .talk settlement strongly suggests that Google Talk, the company’s instant messaging client, is on the way out.
When Google applied for .talk in 2012 it intended to give Talk users custom domains to act as a contact point, but in 2013 Google started to indicate that it will be replaced as a brand by Google Hangouts.
The withdrawal seems to suggest that the existence of a gTLD application, a relatively small investment, is not an overwhelming factor when companies consider product rebranding.
I wonder what effect a live, active TLD will have on similar decisions in future.
But Google won the two-horse races for .dev and .drive and after Amazon withdrew its applications.
Google has a product called Google Drive, while Amazon runs Amazon Cloud Drive. Both companies have developer programs, though Google’s is arguably the more substantial of the two.
Google has also won .play — Google Play is its app store — after Amazon, Radix and Star Registry’s withdrawals. Amazon does not have a Play brand.
Google has also withdrawn its application for .book, leaving six remaining applicants, including Amazon, in the contention set.
I don’t currently know whether these contention sets were settled privately or via a third-party auction.

1 Comment Tagged: .dev, .drive, .play, .talk, .you, amazon, auctions, contention, google, ICANN, new gTLDs

NYC picks Panama registrar for reserved names

The City of New York is working with Panama-based registrar CCI REG to reserve government-related domains in the new .nyc gTLD, despite imposing residency requirements on registrants.
CCI REG director Gerardo Aristizabal tells us it has already handled over 100 registrations during the “City Government-Affiliated Reserve List” phase of .nyc’s protracted launch schedule.
While it’s not technically an exclusive deal, the registrar does appear to be the registrar of choice for the City.
Aristizabal says that he’s in the process of setting up a New York-based registrar to handle .nyc-related business in future.
But today CCI REG is incorporated in Panama and is perhaps best-known to DI readers for being one of .CO Internet’s launch registrars. .CO is now of course owned by Neustar, .nyc’s back-end.
The registrar operated my.co, which focused on the Colombian market. for .co. For .nyc, it’s operating at hellodotnyc.com.
It amuses me that the City of New York, which is also the contracted registry for the gTLD, would choose to use an overseas registrar, given .nyc’s restricted policies.
To buy a .nyc name during general availability, currently slated for October, you’ll need a New York mailing address.

1 Comment Tagged: .nyc, cci reg, city of new york, neustar

ICANN looking for chief registrant advocate (but there’s a catch)

ICANN is looking for a Registrant Services Director — somebody to advocate for the rights of registrants within the organization.
It’s a paid staff position, reporting directly to Global Domains Division president and ICANN number two Akram Atallah, not a part of the volunteer community.
The catch is that the newly created position is going to be based in Istanbul, Turkey, at one of ICANN’s three hub offices, which is probably going to limit the pool of available candidates.
“The right person for the role will build a team to develop and maintain a range of services and activities to support the needs of Domain Name Registrants,” the job ad states.
“It involves participation in a number of cross-organizational projects in areas such as registrant rights, contract interpretations and compliance, operations, legal policy definitions and implementation with a strong focus on multi-stakeholder collaboration,” it goes on.
I believe it will be the first time ICANN has had an executive dedicated to looking after the interests of registrants on its staff.
Limiting the pool of candidates further, ICANN is looking for somebody with eight to 12 years’ experience in a relevant role within the domain name industry.
An MBA or an advanced degree in engineering would be a plus, the ad states.

8 Comments Tagged: ICANN

ccTLD anger over IANA group “capture”

Operators of dozens of ccTLDs are said to be furious that they don’t have representation on the group coordinating the transition of the IANA functions from US oversight.
The IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG) has been “captured” by members of ICANN’s country-code Names Supporting Organization, which does not represent all ccTLDs, according to ccTLD sources.
While the ccNSO is the official body representing ccTLDs within ICANN, many refuse to participate.
Some registries fear that signing up to ICANN and its rules may one day lead to them losing their delegations, while others have sovereignty or liability concerns.
It is believed that while 151 ccTLDs participate in the ccNSO, 104 do not.
None of these 104 are represented on the new ICG, which met for the first time to draft a charter in London last Thursday and Friday.
The ICG is tasked with holding the pen when the community writes a proposal for replacing the US government in the management of the DNS root zone and other IANA functions.
The ccTLD community was given four seats on the ICG, out of a total of 27. All four seats were taken by ccNSO members, picked by a five-person selection committee that included one non-ccNSO member.
I gather that about 20 non-ccNSO ccTLDs are up in arms about this state of affairs, which they believe has seen them “proactively excluded” from the ICG.
Some concerns originate from operators of ccTLDs for dependent territories that may face the risk of being taken over by governments in future.
Because IANA manages the DNS root zone, the transition process may ultimately impact ccTLD redelegations.
But the loudest voice, one of only two speaking on the record so far, is India’s government-established National Internet Exchange of India, which runs .in.
Dr Govind (apparently he doesn’t use his first name), CEO of NIXI, said in a statement last week:

Clearly the process has already been captured by a subset of the ccTLD community. The selection process controlled by the ccNSO resulted in all four seats being assigned to their members. A significant section of the ccTLD Registry operator community do not share the objectives of the ccNSO membership are now excluded from the process.

Balazs Martos, registry manager of Hungary’s .hu, added:

I am very concerned that the ccNSO seem to feel they speak for the whole ccTLD Community when dealing with every IANA matter. They do not, .HU is an IANA service user, but we are not a member of the ccNSO.

The joint statement also raises concerns about “cultural diversity”, which seems like a cheap move played from a position in the deck close to the race card.
The ccTLD representation on the ICG comprises the UK, New Zealand, China and Nigeria.
The chair of the ccNSO, .ca’s Byron Holland, has stated that the way the these four were selected from the 12 candidates (two of whom were non-ccNSO) was a “very difficult task”.
The selection committee had to consider factors such as geography, registry size, candidate expertise and available time, governance structure and business model, Holland said.
Blogging last week, addressing Govind’s concerns if not directly acknowledging them, he wrote:

Given the criteria we had to balance, there were no ‘reserved’ seats for any one group. The fact is four seats only allowed us to ensure some – not all – of the criteria were met. The discussion was difficult and the outcome was not unanimous. We did, however, reach consensus. In paring this list down to the final four, we balanced the selection criteria – balance being the keyword here. Geographic diversity is a good example of this – while there are five ICANN-defined geographic regions, we only had four seats on the Coordination Committee.
…
Did we meet the all of the criteria set out at the beginning of the process? No, but given the constraints we were facing – four seats to represent a community as large and diverse as ccTLDs – I have no hesitation in endorsing each of them for their ability to be representative of the global ccTLD community – both ccNSO members and non-members – effectively.

2 Comments Tagged: .hu, .in, ccnso, cctlds, iana, iana transition, ICANN, icg, nixi

Domain “slammer” finally gets suspended by ICANN

The beneficiary of the long-running Domain Registry of America scam is finally at risk of losing its ICANN accreditation.
ICANN has suspended Brandon Gray Internet Services, which does business as NameJuice.com, due to the “deceptive” marketing practices carried out by its “resellers”.
The company won’t be able to register any gTLD names or receive transfers for 90 days.
If NameJuice hasn’t sorted out its act by October 17, it faces the risk of losing its accreditation permanently.
The company, you will recall, is the primary beneficiary of the “slamming” scam, which tricks customers of other registrars into transferring their names with confusing, invoice-style junk mail.
Slammers have been operating under various names including Domain Registry of America, Domain Registry of Europe and Domain Registry of Canada for close to 15 years.
I received one in 2011 from the “Domain Renewal Group”, which I blogged about here.
It was sued by Register.com in 2002 over the practice, was forced into a settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission in 2003, and has been involved in tangles with regulators all over the world for the last decade.
But it seems ICANN’s hands were tied until Brandon Gray signed the new 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement, which gives ICANN’s compliance department more power over resellers.
ICANN said:

Since at least 2009, ICANN has received numerous complaints from Registered Name Holders, registrars, and various ICANN Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees regarding the business solicitation practices of Brandon Gray’s resellers. Such practices were not specifically prohibited under the 2001 and 2009 RAAs. Section 3.12 of the 2013 RAA, however, requires registrars to ensure its reseller’s actions comply with the RAA, as well as the Registrants’ Benefits and Responsibilities Specification, which protects Registered Name Holders from false or deceptive practices.

ICANN fingered “reseller” Registration Services Inc as the party behind DROA and the other slamming scams.
In order to cure the latest breach, NameJuice has until August 8 to provide a tonne of information about Registration Services, including its certificate of incorporation, samples of its mailshots, and details of how a sample of specific domains came to be transferred.
In order to avoid losing its accreditation by October 10, the company will also have to promise to force its reseller to stop its deceptive marketing and provide ICANN with samples of future mailings.
NameJuice has 13 tasks in total to comply with to avoid termination proceedings; it’s looking promising that ICANN will finally shut down this blight on the industry just a few months from now.
The irony is, of course, if NameJuice loses its accreditation, all of the names that were obtained under false pretenses will not revert naturally to their original registrar. Instead, if ICANN follows its standard practice, they’ll be transferred in bulk to a third registrar.
You can read the breach notice here and the suspension notice here.

1 Comment Tagged: brandon gray internet services, compliance, domain registry of america, ICANN, namejuice, registration services inc, slamming

.tk passes 25 million domains

The .tk registry has become only the second TLD to pass 25 million domain names.
Netherlands-based Dot TK passed the milestone at the weekend, according to statistics posted on its web site, and today has 25,068,128 domains under management.
It’s grown by a whopping 837,703 names in the last 30 days alone.
That means Tokelau, the tiny island nation the ccTLD represents, has a nominal 17,900 domains per citizen.
The reason for the huge numbers is that .tk names are usually free to register anywhere in the world, with Dot TK using a freemium model through which it only makes money from add-on services.
.tk became the largest ccTLD last year, hitting 16.7 million names in April 2013 and passing Germany’s .de, which today has about 15.7 million domains under management.
Being free, you’d expect there to be a disproportionate amount of nefarious activity in .tk, but that does not appear to be the case any more.
The TLD doesn’t show up in the top 10 most abused TLDs in the most recent report of the Anti-Phishing Working Group (pdf).
Architelos says (pdf) it’s the 47th-safest out of 72 TLDs, scoring it better than .com, .net, .co and many other popular TLDs.

3 Comments Tagged: .tk, dot tk

That’s all folks! Final gTLD app gets approved

ICANN has finally finished evaluating all 1,930 new gTLD applications from the 2012 round.
Indian conglomerate Tata Group’s dot-brand .tata passed Extended Evaluation (pdf) on Friday, having apparently secured the non-objection of Morocco, which has a province of the same name.
Calculated from Reveal Day — June 13, 2012 — it’s taken a little over two years (765 days) for every bid to pass through first Initial Evaluation and then, if necessary, Extended Evaluation.
Calculated from the first batch of Initial Evaluation results being released, it’s 483 days.
A total of 1,783 applications passed IE. A further 38 failed, of which 35 passed EE. There have been 211 withdrawals so far and, due to contention, another 380 are expected.

5 Comments Tagged: .tata, extended evaluation, ICANN, initial evaluation, new gTLDs