Latest news of the domain name industry

Recent Posts

Cosmetics brand terminates its gTLD

Kevin Murphy, March 13, 2024, Domain Registries

Brazilian cosmetics maker Natura has become the latest new gTLD operator to tell ICANN to terminate its dot-brand contract.

The company said it is “no longer interested” in operating .natura, and ICANN has agreed to end the Registry Agreement.

Natura was not using the domain beyond the mandatory nic.natura, but my records show that it did start experimenting with usage about five years ago.

A handful of domains, including global.natura, app.natura and innovationchallenge.natura were active and resolved to full-content web sites, but these were all shut off at the end of 2023.

The move comes at a time when Natura has been in a cost-cutting drive, divesting various assets and de-listing itself from the New York Stock Exchange.

The string “natura” is a dictionary word in some languages, meaning “nature” in Italian for example, so it could feasibly be applied for in future new gTLD program rounds.

Nic.br wins dot-brand from Afilias

Brazilian registry Nic.br has won its sixth gTLD client.
It’s taking on the dot-brand back-end business of Natura, a cosmetics company based in its home town of Sao Paulo.
The .natura gTLD was previously managed by Afilias.
I can’t imagine it’s a hugely valuable deal.
Natura has only a few domains in its zone. It’s using global.natura as a portal to its various national ccTLD sites and app.natura as a gateway to app stores where its mobile app can be obtained.
It’s the latest gTLD to change back-ends in the current wave of new gTLD rejiggering to come about as contracts negotiated during the 2012 application round start to expire.
Nic.br also runs the dot-brands .uol and .globo, the small city TLD .rio, the unlaunched generics .bom (means “good” in Portuguese) and .final, and of course its original ccTLD, .br.