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Rubens Kühl has died

Kevin Murphy, November 13, 2025, Domain Policy

Rubens Kühl, a mainstay of the ICANN community and prolific commentator on the domain name industry, has died tragically young.

According to Brazilian ccTLD registry NIC.br, Rubens died November 3 at the age of 55, survived by his wife and two children.

Rubens was at NIC.br for 16 years, mostly at the registrar arm Registro.br, where he was product marketing manager.

He was a regular presence at ICANN meetings and served on the GNSO Council for a term from 2016.

“Rubens was a kind person, a brilliant technical guy, always open to sharing his extensive knowledge with anyone,” one Brazilian friend wrote on social media. “He will be missed not only here but by the whole Internet community around the world.”

“We will remember Rubens as an exceptional professional and a generous colleague who greatly contributed to our community,” said LACTLD, the regional ccTLD registry association.

ICANNWiki notes that he was known by some as “Mestre dos Magos” or “Dungeon Master”, due to his “vast knowledge, sharpness, and dry humor.”

I really liked Rubens. We only met in person a handful of times but he was by far the most prolific commenter on this blog and I always enjoyed reading what he had to say, even when we disagreed. This is the first time I’ve had to write an obituary with tears in my eyes.

.br tops five million names

Kevin Murphy, September 28, 2022, Domain Registries

Brazil’s .br ccTLD has topped five million registered domains for the first time.

Stats provided by registry NIC.br show that the milestone was passed around September 14.

The last million names have been added in just the last few years — .br hit four million in late March 2019 and started a steep climb when the pandemic began a year later.

Verisign’s latest Domain Name Industry Brief has .br as the sixth-largest ccTLD, but the most up-to-date statistics have .br actually passing .ru, which has been bleeding regs for the last six months and now has fewer than five million, into fifth place.

NIC.br says that surveys show that seven out of every eight domains registered by Brazilians are .br names.

Brazil to launch domains for detectives, librarians and geologists

Kevin Murphy, July 16, 2020, Domain Registries

Bucking the worldwide trend for major ccTLDs to simplify their namespaces, Brazil is poised to launch another dozen new third-level domain options.

NIC.br said last week that it will launch five open spaces and seven more dedicated to specific professions.

The open zones include .app.br and .dev.br, aping two fairly successful Google-owned gTLDs, as well as log.br (for “logistics”), .seg.br (for “security”) and .tec.br (for “technology”).

The profession-specific ones are .bib.br for librarians, .des.br for designers, .det.br for detectives, .enf.br for nurses, .coz.br for chefs, .geo.br for geologists and .rep.br for sales reps.

.br is already probably the most taxonomical of all the ccTLDs, with an eye-watering 130 3LD options, including over 40 profession-specific spaces, available.

Prices for .br domains are BRL 40 ($7.45) a year. The 12 new options become available July 20.

Nic.br wins dot-brand from Afilias

Kevin Murphy, June 20, 2019, Domain Registries

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.

Brazil dancing around four million reg milestone

Kevin Murphy, October 3, 2018, Domain Registries

The Brazilian ccTLD, .br, last week topped four million registrations for the first time, then promptly dropped back below the milestone.
The TLD was at 4,000,260 domains on Monday September 24, prompting a press release from Nic.br, dropping back below four mill the next day, then hit 4,002,574 this Monday.
The TLD stands at 3,996,604 today, according to statistics Nic.br publishes on its web site.
It’s taken about six years to grow from three million names. The leap from two million to three million took about two and a half years.
Brazil operates on a three-level structure, with dozens of second-level domain options available to registrants.
The large majority of registered names — 3,645,073 — are in the .com.br space.