Com Laude buys Fairwinds

Two dot-brand gTLD consultants are to merge in a deal announced today.

London-based Com Laude said it is acquiring Washington DC-based Fairwinds Partners for an undisclosed amount.

Com Laude said that it got more than 120 dot-brand gTLDs for its clients in the 2012 round, and that Fairwinds was the consultant on 133 applications back then.

The company added that it is “currently engaged to assist customers to obtain hundreds of TLDs in the 2026 round”.

Word on the street is that Com Laude is doing gangbusters recruiting dot-brand clients for the Next Round, and scooping up Fairwinds certainly won’t hurt in that effort.

Both companies help brands with their gTLD applications and then take care of the ICANN paperwork to keep them — alive but often dormant — for their lifecycle.

My records show Fairwinds has lost a few dozen gTLD-management customers over the last few years, and has acquired none.

The Next Round is due to open for three months of applications next April.

Comment Tagged: acquisition, com laude, fairwinds

Unstoppable wants to be a registry back-end

Unstoppable Domains has applied to ICANN to become a back-end registry services provider, according to the company’s CEO.

Matt Gould told DI that the company is currently going through the Registry Service Provider Evaluation Program, which pre-approves RSPs prior to next year’s next round of applications.

There are 27 companies with applications submitted to the program, according to ICANN’s latest stats, but Unstoppable is the first confirmed market newcomer.

The company is a recently accredited registrar, but is best-known for selling names on non-DNS blockchain naming systems.

Gould said Unstoppable plans to use its RSP accreditation for its own gTLD applications and those of its crypto-company clients. It doesn’t sound like it will be aggressively competing for customers in the traditional DNS space.

The accreditation is necessary because Unstoppable intends to vertically integrate, marrying traditional DNS with on-chain names in its gTLDs, so extra technical work is needed, Gould said.

Unstoppable is building its registry infrastructure using Google’s open-source Nomulus software, he said.

6 Comments Tagged: blockchain, ICANN, new gTLDs, next round, rsp evaluation program, rsps, unstoppable domains

Sixteen new gTLD bids could face the firing squad

ICANN’s board of directors has an unusually bumper crop of non-trivial resolutions on its agenda for next week, including the fate of the .ly TLD, new anti-harassment rules, and killing off as many as 16 applications from the 2012 new gTLD application round.

Of the nine items on the agenda, published overnight, four stand out as noteworthy:

Termination Procedure for Remaining 2012 Round Applications that were not Successful

With ICANN spooling up to start accepting new gTLD applications in the second quarter next year, it appears to be ready to clear the decks of the last application round by killing off lingering applications.

While details of the proposed procedure are not yet available, it could apply to as many as 15 applications that are currently marked as “Will Not Proceed” or other failure states in ICANN’s application database.

Perhaps the most obviously affected application is Nameshop’s bid for .idn, which was rejected because the string matches a protected country-code for Indonesia. ICANN has been begging Nameshop to withdraw its application for many years, but the requests have fallen on deaf ears.

If ICANN’s search engine is to be believed, major companies such as Tata (.tata, blocked on geographic grounds) and L’Oréal (.salon, lost at last-resort auction to Identity Digital) still have failed, unwithdrawn applications.

Applications for contested, legally challenged, as-yet-undelegated gTLDs, including .web and .hotel, are also apparently still live in the system.

Transfer of the .LY (Libya) top-level domain to the General Authority of Communications and Informatics

Libya’s .ly ccTLD is notable because it’s somewhat popular as a domain hack for words that end in “ly”. It’s been delegated to Libyan state-owned General Post and Telecommunication Company for 20 years.

While the transition from GPTC to GACI, the government regulator, may just be a formality, there’s an added wrinkle that Libya, tormented by civil unrest since the fall of dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, currently has two governments and GACI is reportedly aligned with just one of them.

Community Anti-Harassment Policy and Retirement of Board Working Group on Anti-Harassment

ICANN has been sitting on this one for longer than expected. The Org proposed revisions to its Community Anti-Harassment Policy a year ago and quickly putting them to public comment, but there’s been scant movement on the issue since January.

The proposed changes would further regulate personal and professional interactions between ICANN community members.

Some commenters complained that the changes do not go far enough, suggesting that situations where no offence was intended and none was taken should also be disciplinary infractions.

Others said that the changes would have a chilling effect and fail to sufficiently take into account cultural differences among ICANN’s global community.

The proposals came shortly after the latest in a series of sexual harassment lawsuits against the Org was revealed. That suit was settled after ICANN failed to get it thrown out of court.

Some relevant developments over the last eight months include the appointment of a new Ombuds and CEO, allegations (denied by ICANN) that it retaliated against friends of the latest harassment plaintiff by firing them, and ICANN’s capitulation to the Trump administration by easing itself away from public commitments to diversity, inclusion and equity.

3 Comments Tagged: dei, harassment, ICANN, idn, libya, ly, new gTLDs, redelegations

Registry to release one-letter domains tomorrow

People looking for a single-character domain name in a two-character ccTLD will have a new option from tomorrow.

Adsib, the registry for Bolivian ccTLD, plans to make one and two-character domains directly under .bo on September 4.

There are no restrictions on how many domains a person may register, not are there any local presence requirements, according to the registry’s new policy document.

It’s not clear yet whether there will be premium pricing for SCDNs. Regular pricing for a second-level .bo domain from the registry is BOB 980 (about $140). Overseas registrars mark up by about $50.

The new policies come as part of a broader sweep by Adsib that also updates rules on banned content, restricted second-level spaces, transfers and subdomains, among other things.

Comment Tagged: .adsib, .bo, bolivia, scdn, single-character

New ICANN funding rules will cost smaller ccTLDs more

The way ccTLDs fund ICANN is being reformed, with some registries set to pay thousands of dollars more to the Org’s annual budget.

The new rules, adopted by the ccNSO late last week, won’t affect the largest ccTLDs like .de and .uk, but they could drag mid-tier and the smallest registries into higher tax bands.

The funding model, last adjusted in 2013, is based on each registry’s number of domains under management. The suggested contribution is fixed, rather than per-domain, and depends on which DUM range a ccTLD falls into.

The newly approved bands see the top two tiers unchanged — with over five million names the due is $225,000, and over 2.5 million it’s $150,000.

The third tier, which captures at least 14 ccTLDs from the likes of Denmark, Japan and Mexico, starts at 1.2 million names (a change from one million in the 2013 guidelines) and continues to suggest a $75,000 donation.

Moving the threshold from a million to 1.2 million doesn’t seem to affect many registries. Of the ccTLDs I have up-to-date stats for, only South Korea and possibly Montenegro appear to benefit from the change.

Band D, which affects about a dozen ccTLDs from the likes of Malaysia, Norway and New Zealand, is seeing its contributions go up from $25,000 to $35,000, but the threshold is rising from 500,000 domains to 600,000.

This means that .ai would have to pay the higher rate, but historically Anguilla has not contributed to ICANN at all.

As the ccNSO is at pains to point out, ccTLD contributions are all voluntary, and the bands are suggestions rather than binding.

Fees for the smaller ccTLDs seem to have seen the most rejiggering, with three new low-end tax bands being introduced for registries with the lowest DUM counts. There are now 10 bands in total rather than seven.

Under the 2013 guidelines, any ccTLD with under 50,000 names was only asked to pay $500 a year. That lowest threshold has now been reduced to 10,000 names, raising dozens of registries into higher bands.

Countries such as Ecuador, Azerbaijan and Algeria, and the French department of Réunion, will now be asked to asked to pay $2,500, up two grand a year.

The contributions are designed to pay for the services ICANN provides ccTLDs, but the overall amount is pretty small compared to the Org’s overall budget.

The ccNSO has calculated that the 2013 model affected 255 ccTLDs and would raise as much as $4 million for ICANN a year. That would change to $4.7 million from 306 ccTLDs under the 2025 model.

But that’s only if everyone plays ball. In reality, only 109 ccTLDs gave ICANN anything at all in its last-reported year, and the total take was $2.1 million. Some registries, from the UK, Israel and Russia, cut or eliminated their funding.

Since its start of the voluntary contribution model, fewer than half of all ccTLD registries have ever given ICANN any money.

1 Comment Tagged: budget, ccnso, cctlds, ICANN

.ai rival lines up gTLD bid

The increasingly popular .ai top-level domain looks like it could have its first full competitor before long.

An organization called 0G Foundation, which says it has made a “decentralized AI operating system”, has announced plans to apply to ICANN for the new gTLD .agi next year.

AGI stands for “artificial general intelligence”, considered by many to be the end goal of AI technology development, where software possesses intelligence equivalent to or better than a human.

0G made the announcement via Unstoppable Domains, its application partner.

The organization plans to make .agi names available on its own proprietary blockchain first, with a “limited-time pre-sale” before launch “in the coming months”.

Unstoppable is selling .agi “reservations”, with prices starting at $5 for gibberish and potentially valuable dictionary words carrying premium price tags.

Comment Tagged: .agi, 0g foundation, ai, ICANN, new gTLDs, next round, unstoppable

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.

1 Comment Tagged: earnings, financials, google, parking, team internet

Sixteen more orgs vie for cheap gTLDs, but…

Africa and Latin America are still under-represented in applications for ICANN’s new gTLD Applicant Support Program, according to the latest stats.

The program now has a whopping 76 organizations at some stage of the application process, which is 31 more than ICANN originally budgeted for. That’s up from 60 a month ago.

The program offers successful applicants a discount of 75% to 85% off the expected $227,000 application fee, among other perks such as access to pro bono service providers.

But the geographic breakdown shows that, as of the August 19 compilation date, only one more applicant hails from Africa and there’s only one more from Latin America and the Caribbean, compared to a month earlier.

Two influential ICANN advisory committees, including the governments, told ICANN earlier this month that they are “deeply concerned” that the ASP doesn’t seem to be reaching potential applicants in these two regions.

Hardly any applications have actually been submitted to be formally evaluated yet. There are 37 open applications that have yet to even submit the names of their organizations. Another 36 have done so, but not yet completed the application form.

I wonder if the top-line count may include a certain number of tire-kickers. The barriers to starting an application are pretty low, requiring just an account on the ICANN web site and a one-time password app on your phone.

Only three applications so far have been conditionally approved — one from Europe and two from Asia-Pacific — and three others from Asia-Pac have submitted their applications for review.

Of the 37 that have opened an application, the geographic region of 19 is still not known, so it’s possible the regional mix could change a lot as applications are actually submitted.

The program is open to charities and other non-profits, with participation from commercial entities limited to small businesses based in poorer regions.

2 Comments Tagged: applicant support program, asp, ICANN, new gTLDs, next round

So who’s registering sunrise domains these days?

Amazon went into sunrise with three gTLDs this week, and I thought it might be interesting to pore over the latest zone files to see which companies are the most motivated to protect their brands nowadays.

First, because sometimes the results are just weird. Second, because countless new gTLD consultants are trawling the business world for prospects right now, and sunrise participation data might be useful as lead generation.

Amazon launched .you, .talk and .fast on Tuesday, so these results are for the first two days of sunrise, a period that lasts for a month. As such, there are only a few dozen registered domains in each TLD, at most.

Let’s start with the weird: dog food companies seem to fear cybersquatting more than you might imagine. Mars brands Orijen, Champion Pet Foods and Acana are all protected (though no more of Mars’ dozens of consumer brands), as is independent retailer PetSmart.

An AI company have a presence on the list, which is a relatively new phenomenon for sunrise periods. Anthropic has registered both “anthropic” and “claude”, for its chatbot, in all three TLDs.

Financial companies have a strong presence on the lists, with Freddie Mac, Bank of America, Intesa Sanpaolo, Merrill and Astorg all registering names. Energy brands Iberdrola and Avangrid are registered.

Conscious Capital, a Swiss investment company that doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page, has defended its brand. That’s notable because the company uses a .us domain for its web site and the .com is listed for sale by a domainer for $2 million.

1-800-Flowers.com, which has somehow managed to get a Trademark Clearinghouse listing for “flowers” — the product it sells — participated in the sunrises as usual. The gTLD .flowers belongs to XYZ.com.

Hotel chain Hilton, podcasters Wondery, construction company VINCI Concessions (vinci-concessions.you???) and tech firms Broadcom and AT&T have all also got in quick to grab their matching domains.

The sunrise periods run until September 25, with general availability following hot on their heels.

1 Comment Tagged: .fast, .talk, .you, amazon, sunrise

Cloud gTLD gets launch dates

Another long-dormant gTLD from the 2012 round is set to launch soon.

Documents filed with ICANN show that the Chinese software company Qihoo 360 is set to launch .yun, the Pinyin transliteration of the Chinese word and Mandarin character meaning “cloud”.

The ICANN web site states that .yun will enter a one-month sunrise period September 24, with general availability likely coming around October 28.

Qihoo stated in its 2012 application that the domain would be marketed via its existing cloud storage services.

The company also is contacted to run .xihuan (“like”), .anquan (“security”) and .shouji (“cellphone”), but it hasn’t launched any of them yet.

Qihoo has been sanctioned by the US government for the last five years due to its alleged links to the Chinese military.

Comment Tagged: .yun, ICANN, new gTLDs, qihoo 360