Team Internet lays off 200

When Google tweaks its algorithms, people lose their jobs.

That seems to be the takeaway from Team Internet’s latest trading update, which includes the revelation that more than 200 employees, more than a quarter of its 2024 end-of-year headcount, have been laid off recently.

The blame was laid squarely with changes to Google’s advertising services, which already scuppered a deal that would have taken Team Internet private back in March.

Google said back then that its advertisers would be opted out of AdSense For Domains, the service that Team Internet used to monetise most of its parked domains, by default.

Team Internet has been migrating its domains to Google’s Related Search for Content, which shows context-relevant suggested searches on content pages, but it’s taking time to make the move.

The result of this is that the company made a lot less money in its first half. Revenue for the six months to June 30 was $263.9 million, compared to $409.7 million for the first half of 2024.

The company also slipped from profit to loss at the operating level, while adjusted EBITDA was $24.6 million, compared to $46.6 million a year ago.

Its Domains, Identity & Software division, which includes the CentralNic registry and registrars such as Key-Systems, saw revenue up a smidge at $103.9 million and adjusted EBITDA up 28.9% at $10.7 million.

The growth was driven by price, not volume. The number of handled domain reg-years was down by 4% to 12.9 million, while the average price was up 7% to $12.79.

Huge registrars flee from RDRS

Ten notable domain registrars have abandoned ICANN’s pilot Registration Data Request Service, substantially reducing its usefulness.

In June, 10 accredited registrars pulled their support for the voluntary service, which is designed to give law enforcement, IP owners, and security researchers an easier way to request unredacted Whois records.

Team Internet is out, taking with it its registrars 1API, Internet BS, Key-Systems GmbH, Key-Systems LLC, Moniker, RegistryGate and TLD Registrar Solutions.

Newfold Digital exited with Network Solutions, Register․com, and PublicDomainRegistry․com.

The sum of all this is that there are now 78 participating registrars, compared to 88 at the end of May, and they now only represent 47% of all registered gTLD domains, down from 54%.

That’s the lowest level of participation since RDRS launched in late November 2023 and the first time it’s dropped below half of all registered gTLD domains.

Usage of RDRS has dropped to a whole new low. There were only 68 requests for Whois records in June, down from the previous low of 91 in March.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, the number of searches that resulted in “Registrar Not Supported” errors remained static at 16%, tying for the lowest ratio across the entire pilot to date.

ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee recently said it wants ICANN to consider making RDRS mandatory for all registrars.

Aug 7 Correction: this article originally erroneously stated that Corporation Service Company had removed one registrar and added another. In fact, the registrar in question had simply changed its name. I apologise for the error.

GoDaddy loses .co to Team Internet

Team Internet is to take over back-end duties for .co, after agreeing to take less than half as much as GoDaddy was charging.

The London-based company has teamed up on a joint venture, Equipo PuntoCo, with Panama-based registrar CCI REG to sign a 10-year deal with Colombia’s communications ministry, MINTIC.

The handover will put an end to GoDaddy’s 15-year stint as .co’s back end. The TLD was relaunched globally as a .com alternative in 2010 by .CO Internet, which was subsequently acquired by Neustar and then GoDaddy.

It seems Team Internet was willing to price its services much lower than GoDaddy. The company said in a statement that Equipo PuntoCo is getting 8% of gross revenue from .co sales, compared to the 19% GoDaddy was getting and the 93% .CO Internet originally received. The rest goes into the Colombian public purse.

While it’s not the biggest TLD on Team Internet’s servers (that honor goes to .xyz), it’s going to be the second or third largest migration of a single TLD between registry services providers in the history of the DNS.

.co had about 3.2 million domains at the start of the year. Today, Team Internet says it has “more than 3 million”. It’s the same ballpark as .au’s 2018 move from Neustar to Afilias, which was 3.1 million names, but a million shy of this year’s migration of .in from GoDaddy to Tucows.

When it comes to retaining the big ccTLDs, it seems GoDaddy really can’t catch a break.

Radix and Identity Digital also competed for the contract.

Sales and profits dip at Team Internet

Having been one of the industry’s notable growth stories over the last decade, Team Internet saw its revenue and profit go down in 2024, according to its latest earnings report.

The company is also predicting a miserable 2025 as it tries to work around Google’s decision to turn off advertising on parked domains by default for its customers, a key source of Team Internet’s revenue.

Revenue was down 4.1% to $802.8 million, the company said, and adjusted EBITDA was down 4.7% to $91.9 million.

The domains part of its business seemed to fare better than its search unit, recording revenue up 7.4% at $202.7 million. But this division also includes some non-domains software businesses, so we can’t really break its performance out any more granularly.

Team Internet said the current analyst consensus for adjusted EBITDA this year is between $60 million and $62 million, a huge drop on 2024, with double-digit growth returning next year.

CEO Michael Riedl said in a statement: “The Search segment’s difficult reset in 2025 in response to recent market developments is the acceleration of a long-anticipated pivot, not, the board believes, a permanent setback.”

He also seemed to confirm that the company will rely on AI-generated content to populate its domains, enabling it to use Google’s contextual advertising.

Google scuppers Team Internet acquisition after profit warning

A Norwegian private equity company has dropped its plans to acquire Team Internet after Google changed the way it handles advertising on parked domains, a key source of revenue for the company.

Oslo-based Verdane had a deadline of today to announce a formal offer for the company, but instead said it “does not intend to make an offer” because “there has been a material change of circumstances”.

While Verdane did not elaborate, there was a simultaneous announcement from Team Internet that Google’s recently announced changes to AdSense for Domains present a “challenge” that will harm its business faster than it can adapt.

Google said last week that as of March 19 it will start opting its advertisers out of AFD, the service domainers and registrars use to monetize many parked domain names. Advertisers will be able to opt back in, but are not expected to do so en masse.

Team Internet’s Search reporting unit made $72 million of its $91 million net revenue from AFD last year, which it expects to decline following the changes.

The company said it plans to instead monetize its domains using Google’s newer Related Search On Content product, which shows Google search results including paid results on the publishers’ own sites, based on the content of the page.

That presumably means Team Internet is going to have to populate its domains with spammy, low-quality and presumably AI-generated content, in order to trigger the RSOC contextual algorithm. Thanks, Google!

“The market development has been long-anticipated, though the announced acceleration is a challenge,” Team Internet told investors.

“It is anticipated that, during this transition period, contributions from AFD will decline faster than contributions from RSOC appreciate, meaning that the financial performance of Team Internet’s Search segment will see a trough in 2025 before it recovers from 2026 onwards and returns to the long-term pattern,” it added.

It expects adjusted EBITDA to more than halve for the year in its Search segment, from $57 million last year to between $20 million and $25 million this year. The company said its domains business, which includes its registry and registrars, should be unaffected.

But that domains business seems to be still up for sale. Team Internet said it has received “repeated approaches” for the domains unit and is carrying out a “comprehensive review of its asset ownership”.

All the one-character .sk domains to be auctioned

SK-NIC, part of Team Internet, says it plans to auction off all 36 single-character .sk domains over the coming months.

The auction plans also include releasing all the 200-odd two-letter domains that match existing ccTLDs, as well as .com.sk and .net.sk, which have all been registry-reserved to date.

The registry said it plans to hold auctions every two months starting on the 15th and running for seven days, starting in November.

There will be a trademark priority phase first, running from October 1 to October 14, in which trademark owners can apply for their matching domain for €300. If successful, the domain will cost them €3,000 ($3,348) or more if a contested mark has to be auctioned.

Opening bids for the regular auctions will start at €1,000 for two-char names, €1,500 for the 26 one-letter domains, and €2,000 for everything else, SK-NIC says.

The domains to be sold — I count 277 — are listed here (pdf). They’re all either one-character or matches for existing TLDs, but sk.sk is not on the list.

.sk is of course the ccTLD for Slovakia, but it’s owned from the UK following CentralNic’s acquisition of SK-NIC and has no local presence requirements. There are over 471,000 registered domains today, according to the registry.

Team Internet spends $41 million on content farm

Team Internet is back in acquisition mode, saying this morning it has picked up an Israeli content farm business for $41.8 million.

It’s bought Shinez IO, based in Tel Aviv and Denver, for the initial sum plus a potential extra $12.3 million if the company meets certain financial targets over the next two years, the company said.

Shinez operates a network of lightweight blogs covering areas such as food and fashion, which are marketed via social media and monetized via multiple ad networks.

It’s a lucrative business — Team Internet says Shinez had revenue of $111 million, $17.2 million in net revenue, and $10.4 million of EBITDA in 2023.

The acquisition edges Team Internet, formerly CentralNic, ever closer to becoming a billion-dollar company. It now expects revenue for 2023 to work out at $948 million.

The deal also seems to mean reduced exposure to Google as the company’s number one ad revenue source. Team Internet said “this acquisition would more than double the Online Marketing segment’s revenue generated independently of our Tier 1 channel partner”.

Team Internet says revenue beat estimates

Team Internet gave a preview of its 2023 earnings report this morning, saying that revenue grew faster than its own targets and analysts’ estimates.

The company, formerly CentraNic, expects to post revenue around $835 million, up 15% on 2022, and profit up 12% at $96 million for the year.

The firm’s Online Presence segment, which includes the domains business, had revenue up 16% at $179 million, while the far larger Online Marketing segment saw revenue up 14% at $656 million.

Team Internet will report its full results on March 18.

Team Internet hires Nominet alum as domains CEO

Team Internet, formerly CentralNic, has named Simon McCalla as CEO of its domains-related business.

McCalla is formerly CTO of .uk registry Nominet, though he’s been taking a break from the domains industry for the last few years.

Team Internet said he is now CEO of its “Online” division, which I can only assume is the business it previously called “Online Presence”.

That’s the division encompassing the company’s registrars, registries and back-end business, as opposed to the traffic arbitrage business where it makes most of its money nowadays.

CentralNic rebrands as Team Internet

Another well-known domain industry firm has rebranded itself around a forgettable, search-resistant company name.

CentralNic is now Team Internet, though it will continue to use “CentralNic” in its domains business.

The company has changed its primary domain from centralnic.com to teaminternet.com (a redirect is already in place) and its AIM ticker symbol from CNIC to TIG.

The brand comes from Team Internet the parking company, which CentralNic acquired for $48 million in 2019.

The change makes sense — CentralNic doesn’t even make a quarter of its revenue from domains any more. Today, most of its money comes from social media marketing arbitrage and domain monetization.

Even if it were still laser-focused on domains, the registrar side of the business is bigger and “Nic” doesn’t make much sense there.

The company started off selling third-level domains in pseudo-gTLDs such as uk.com and gb.com, before enthusiastically embracing new gTLDs as a back-end provider and subsequently getting into the registrar game.

As its 10-year IPO anniversary approaches this month CEO Michael Riedl observed in a press release that the company has grown from a $4 million annual business in 2013 to a $728 million business last year.

Also of note, Gavin Brown, who was with the company since pretty much the start and held various C-level positions on the technical side of the house over the years, left the company last week to join ICANN.