.my domains to be sold globally next month

The .my namespace is to be opened up to international registrants next month under a deal between the Malaysian registry and Caymans-based Internet Naming Co, according to INCO’s CEO.

Shayan Rostam said that MYNIC will continue to be the registry for .my, but that INCO will look after it outside Malaysia. The deal will allow non-Malaysians to register .my domains for the first time, he said. Currently, some registrars offer local presence services to get around the rules.

INCO already runs a portfolio of gTLDs, the initial batch acquired from UNR a few years ago, and adding .my should bring the ccTLD to a wider range of registrars. There’s going to be a new Registry-Registrar Agreement that is “less restrictive” than the old one, Rostam said.

.my has been around since 1987 and currently has about 313,000 domains under management, split roughly 50:50 between the second-level under .my and third level under .com.my. There are also lesser-used spaces such as .org.my and .net.my.

Rostam said the third-level spaces will still be reserved for Malaysians, but that no local nexus will be required under the second-level. It’s a similar idea to how Colombia’s .co was operated when it relaunched in 2010.

The TLD is of course potentially attractive because it’s an English word commonly used in domains, albeit usually at the start of the name rather than the end. According to my database, “my” is the most commonly-registered ccTLD-match two-letter domain among dot-brands.

Rostam said that he expects to start the relaunch with an Early Access Period, with prices starting at about $25,000, in late May, with full general availability in June.

Renewal pricing in GA is expected to be around the $30 mark — substantially cheaper than current retail prices — but registrars are expected to run first-year promotions in the sub-$10 area,

There will also be a list of premium-priced domains that could pump the pricing up to between $100 and $10,000 per year.

There’s no formal sunrise period — ccTLDs are not governed by ICANN rules and .my has of course been around for almost 40 years — but brand-protection registrars have been given special early access in case they have clients that want protection, Rostam said.

Under a separate deal, INCO has also taken over management of .forum and .feedback on behalf of two of Jay Westerdahl’s companies, Rostam confirmed.

INCO flips a gTLD to Identity Digital

Internet Naming Co has sold one of its gTLDs to Identity Digital, barely a year after taking it from UNR.

The Registry Agreement for .juegos — Spanish for “games” — was assigned to ID subsidiary Dog Beach in early December, according to ICANN records.

ID already runs the English-language .games, while XYZ runs the singular .game. There is no singular gTLD in the Spanish.

.juegos in volume terms has been a disappointment. Originally with UNR predecessor Uniregistry, it peaked at 2,353 domains under management in 2016, when names were priced at around $20 a year.

But the gTLD was affected by Uniregistry’s decision to massively increase prices to compensate for weak volume in 2017, which caused some of the leading registrars to drop the TLDs from their storefront.

To this day, GoDaddy still does not carry .juegos, but Tucows seems to have started selling it again, at an eye-watering $500 a year. Wholesale pricing is believed to be $300 a year. Namecheap sells it for $368 a year.

.juegos had 649 domains under management at the last count. The largest registrar in Entorno, which unsurprisingly based in Spain.

INCO took over .juegos, along with a bunch of other former Uniregistry gTLDs, in late 2022.

It will be interesting to see if ID reduces prices to match .games, which is believed to wholesale at $20 a year.

Five more gTLDs get launch dates

Internet Naming Co has revealed the launch dates for the five dormant gTLDs it acquired late last year.

The company plans to go to Sunrise with .diy, .food, .lifestyle, .living, and .vana on January 24, according to ICANN records.

Before general availability on March 6, there’ll be a week-long Early Access Period, with prices starting at $25,000 wholesale and decreasing daily to settle at GA prices.

Unusually, and I think uniquely, there’s also going to be a 24-hour “Customer Loyalty Period” on February 28/29, which has the same prices as day one of EAP.

INCO CEO Shayan Rostam told me this period “gives us the opportunity to provision domains to certain existing customers or partners after sunrise but before GA.” He described it as a “1-day pioneer program phase for the registry.”

The five gTLDs were bought from Lifestyle Domain Holdings last year, as the would-be registry carried on dumping or selling off its portfolio of long-unused gTLDs.

.vana was a brand, but INCO plans to use it to do something as-yet-unrevealed related to blockchain naming systems. .diy refers to “Do It Yourself”, the practice of carrying out home improvements or repairs without hiring professional experts.

All of the five will be unrestricted. They’ve all been moved to the Tucows back-end registry service provider.

Internet Naming Co acquires five more gTLDs

Internet Naming Co has acquired five unused dot-brand gTLDs and will relaunch them as unrestricted generics in the coming months.

The company, the Caymans-based successor to UNR, has acquired .diy, .food, .lifestyle, .living, and .vana from Lifestyle Domain Holdings, CEO Shayan Rostam told me today.

They were all dot-brands that were not used, but ICANN has already removed the dot-brand restrictions in their contracts, allowing them to be sold to a general audience.

The gTLDs moved to Tucows from Verisign’s winding-down back-end registry services platform this week, and INC is now waiting for ICANN to formally approve the registry agreement assignments, Rostam said.

“I’m launching these TLDs [as] unrestricted generics this winter, as our registrar partners are already aware,” he said in an email. “Startup launch plans will be finalized shortly after assignment.”

The acquisitions increase the size of INC’s portfolio from 11 to 16. The company launched with nine UNR TLDs — .click, .country, .help, .forum, .hiv, .love, .property, .sexy, and .trust — last year. It also runs .realty and .rest, according to its web site.

The five new acquisitions were originally owned by Lifestyle Domain Holdings, a subsidiary of a cable TV company that is now part of Warner Bros Discovery, which appears to be unloading its entire portfolio.

LDH earlier this year asked ICANN to terminate its contracts for .foodnetwork, .travelchannel, .hgtv and .cookingnetwork, and later for .cityeats and .frontdoor.

Uniregistry successor makes big pricing changes on two TLDs

Internet Naming Co is slashing thousands of dollars from the price of one of its TLDs and increasing the price of another by a similar amount.

The company, which took over nine former Uniregistry gTLDs last year, is reducing the wholesale price of .forum domains from $1,000 a year to a retail price of $39 a year, while increasing the wholesale price of .country domains from $20 a year to $2,000 a year.

CEO Shayan Rostam said that in the case of .country, existing registrants (there are fewer than 4,000 domains there today) will be grandfathered in at the old renewal and transfer prices.

He said the TLD will be relaunched with a new business model later in the year — it’s currently marketed as a country music TLD — and that he does not expect to sell many domains at the new higher pricing.

For .forum, which only has a few hundred regs today, a second sunrise period began this week. It will run until May 10 after which there will be a second Early Access Period until prices settle in general availability on May 17.

Rostam said the relaunch will accompany the release of thousands of reserved names, including all one, two and three-character domains, and a tiered pricing system for premium names.