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Go Daddy busts through 40 million mark

Kevin Murphy, March 10, 2010, Domain Registrars

Go Daddy has registered its 40 millionth domain, and it’s closing in on a 50% market share.
The company said that it is now three times the size of its nearest competitor, eNom, and is registering, renewing or transferring one domain per second on average.
Adding domains at a rate of one million per month, Go Daddy could feasibly break through 50 million by the end of the year, but seasonal ups and downs may make early 2011 a more likely timeframe. Go Daddy tends to see a spike in sales after its notorious Super Bowl commercials.
The registrant of the company’s 40 millionth domain does not want his or her identity revealed.

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Gossip: Blackouts, Dallas and Kanye

Kevin Murphy, March 9, 2010, Gossip

Eight moderately amusing links from the last 24 hours.

  • Apparently, ICANN didn’t trust Nairobi’s electrical grid or its hosts’ generators, so took backup power from the US embassy. All was well until a blackout took out the embassy… but not the Kenyatta.
  • Squatters prefer “www” typos shocker.
  • One-year registrations give you …continue reading

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Nominet to release one-letter domains

Nominet, the .uk registry, is thinking about releasing previously restricted domains for registration, including one and two-letter domains and domains that match existing TLDs.
If the scheme goes ahead, it would mean hundreds of domains such as com.co.uk, mobi.co.uk and de.co.uk, which contain strings currently used at the top level, could be auctioned off.
Essentially all ccTLD strings would be made available, as well as …continue reading

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ICANN chief slams African monopolies

Kevin Murphy, March 8, 2010, Domain Policy

ICANN may have been handed a lemon when it discovered six African nations will be crashing its party in Nairobi, but CEO Rod Beckstrom today sought to make lemonade.
Beckstrom “threw down the gauntlet” and invited IGAD nation leaders to “shatter telecom monopolies” and make high-speed internet access more affordable to the average African. …continue reading

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Oscar winners show desire for .movie

As a bit of a film buff, I’ve always thought the case for a .movie gTLD was a slam-dunk.
I’d really rather see movie posters containing URLs like sherlock.movie rather than sherlock-holmes-movie.warnerbros.com.
I thought I’d figure out how many of last night’s Oscar nominees managed to secure movietitle.tld for their official web sites and how many went for other options. …continue reading

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Cyber cop wants Whois privacy shake-up

Kevin Murphy, March 7, 2010, Domain Policy

Registrars should be made to police Whois so cops can take down illegal sites faster, even if domain name prices have to go up as a result, ICANN’s Government Advisory Committee has been told.
Speaking at the GAC hearing on new gTLDs in Nairobi this afternoon, Paul Hoare of the UK’s Serious and Organised Crime Agency called for …continue reading

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Gossip: Geldof, China and Site Finder

Kevin Murphy, March 7, 2010, Gossip

Eight Sunday morning tidbits.

  • Bob Geldof was on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show this morning, via satellite from Nairobi. It seems likely he’s there in relation to to IGAD conference on east-African drought, which is being held at the same venue as the ICANN meeting, which kicked off today. Let’s hope he’s …continue reading

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Contested TLDs by the social media numbers

There are a surprising number of new TLD proposals with two or more would-be applicants. Quite a few are also playing the social media marketing game to win support.
A quick and dirty analysis of the contested TLDs show that .gay and .eco have the largest show of popular support, while some TLDs have seemingly no following at all.
The numbers are not earth-shattering, but I’ve made the table now so I may as well share it.
…continue reading

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Political hell to descend on ICANN meeting

Kevin Murphy, March 5, 2010, Domain Policy

Forget terrorists, in-person attendees at ICANN’s Nairobi meeting will now have to contend with something potentially much worse: politicians.
About 200 civil servants and security goons from six east-African nations will descend on the Kenyatta International Conference Centre on Monday, just as ICANN’s 37th get-together gets together …continue reading

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Gossip: No booth babes for domainers

Kevin Murphy, March 4, 2010, Gossip

Eight interesting things collected from interesting web sites:

  • No booth babes? No magicians? No speakers? No Powerpoint malfunctions? What the hell kind of tech conference is DOMAINFest Europe? At least the beer will be cheap.
  • Speaking of Prague, you can add UDRP to …continue reading

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