ICANN slashes staff and domain prices could rise

ICANN has laid off 33 people, about 7% of its 485 staff, and has raised the specter of increased domain name prices, as it struggles to balance its budget.

The job losses are effective today and come “across all functional areas and regions”, acting CEO Sally Costerton wrote.

The Org said this evening that it made the decision to lose the employees as part of a broader cost-cutting effort that it hopes will help close a $10 million hole in its budget. At the end of April, it had said it was looking for $8 million in savings.

Costerton said ICANN will also look at reducing travel expenses and doing more work from its cheaper regional offices, as well as finding other efficiencies.

But it is also “evaluating ICANN’s fee structure to ensure it scales realistically with inflation”, Costeron wrote.

This will be of great interest to domain registrants, particularly those on a tight budget or with large portfolios, as any increases in the transaction fees ICANN charges registries and registrars will inevitably be passed on to their customers.

Registrars currently add a $0.18 per-domain-per-year ICANN fee at their checkouts, and registries pay $0.25 for every add-year, renew-year and transfer. The fees have not changed in at least the 15 years I’ve been writing this blog.

For ICANN community members and the domain name industry, the cuts will selfishly beg the questions of which services ICANN provides could suffer as a result, and whether it means delays to already overdue projects such as the new gTLD program.

The budget shortfall has arisen due to inflation and sluggish domain sales from the likes of Verisign, ICANN’s biggest funding source. Verisign’s outlook for the year is pretty bearish, with a low estimate of a 1.75% decline in domains under management.

I believe it’s the first time ICANN has been forced into a mass layoff, having reliably swollen its ranks almost every year until quite recently.

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.

MMX vows to refocus under new boss after crappy 2020

MMX says it plans to refocus its business on higher-margin products after a 2020 marred by plummeting registrations, product delays and financial irregularities that led to senior management being oustered.

The new gTLD registry also revealed that it laid off 20% of its staff in a “right-sizing” exercise last year. Due to its modest size, this means about four or five people lost their jobs.

The company said today that acting CEO Tony Farrow has been confirmed for the job full-time, and that he will join the board of directors after regulatory checks.

Farrow took over last October, when CEO Toby Hall and CFO Michael Salazar were both ejected after admitting to over-stating MMX’s revenue and profit in 2019.

Now, Farrow says MMX will spend 2021 focusing on “quality” regs — those with a higher chance of renewing or with higher-margin reg fees — and on its AdultBlock services, which block trademarks and typos across its four porn-themed gTLDs.

Overall domains under management declined 19% in 2020, which appears to be almost entirely down to .vip, a cheap gTLD that initially performed strongly with Chinese speculators, losing about half a million names.

AdultBlock, which covers the old ICM Registry portfolio, launched at the end of 2019 with a high price tag and a couple bulk sales, but stalled during 2020. MMX blames this for a 3% decline in overall billings last year.

The company also hinted that it may try to offload some of its crappier gTLDs, saying:

The new executive team is also reviewing the contribution received from each of its TLDs and the growth prospects for each from new sales initiatives to ensure the carrying values associated with each TLD is appropriate going forward.

Farrow said in a news release:

Our FY 2021 plan will focus on AdultBlock sales, extensive release of inventory to the market, quality registrations with the view of future renewal revenue and standardized promotions for our channel partners. It is a straightforward business where focus must remain on the quality of our domain registrations and promotions with our channel partners. We lost some of the momentum after the initial launch of AdultBlock in FY 2019. However, FY 2021 was always the target year for the full rollout of this new product, and I am encouraged by the dialogue with our channel partners to really move AdultBlock in FY 2021.

AdultBlock, which sets trademark-match domains aside as non-resolving reserved names, launched with a price tag of between $349 and $799 per trademark per year.

MMX separately announced today that it is paying ICM Registry’s investors, primarily founder Stuart Lawley, over alleged (and denied) breaches of unspecified warranties made at the time of the acquisition in May 2018.

Farrow was COO of ICM from the 2011 launch of .xxx until the MMX acquisition.