Go Daddy celebrates its 50,000,000 domain
Go Daddy, the largest registrar in the world, has passed the 50 million domain name milestone over the weekend. The 50-million mark was passed as one DBAkit.com domain was registered by a person from India.
"Sometimes you hear people say all the good domain names are gone, but they are dead wrong," said Go Daddy CEO and Founder Bob Parsons. "An almost unlimited supply of great names is available... right now. In fact, Go Daddy is registering two-and-a-half times more domains a month now, than we were five years ago. Why? Domain names are like 21st century real estate. They allow you to own your own place on the Internet."
"Our research shows that more than 40 percent of small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) do not have an online presence right now," said IDC analyst Ray Boggs. "Hard to believe, but a lot of companies still haven't stepped up to use a company website to reach prospects and customers. Of course this means firms like Go Daddy have what it takes to help SMBs, especially when offering one-stop online resources for SMBs to move from nothing to Web presence to major business generating activities."
Munich: Oktoberfest… and then some
Munich had more to offer than just Oktoberfest this autumn: a large NewDomains.org conference — probably the first European event to be dedicated to new gTLD program — was held in the city.
One important question discussed at the conference was how exactly ICANN plans to process the applications it receives during the application window. ICANN has previously said it may process the applications in batches, meaning that some applicants may have their applications sitting idle while others could be delegated are ready to go live. Although Kurt Pritz, ICANN's Senior VP of the new TLD program, confirmed that ICANN is yet to come to a firm conclusion on how it will process applications, he did say they may be batched in groups of around 500 and that these may be prioritised based on the objective of the application.
"There is a large audience of brands and entrepreneurs who still have little awareness about the new Top-Level Domain program," Michael Twist from AusRegistry says. "Those that are aware of the program and would like to participate are seriously behind schedule in preparing their application and strategy to submit to ICANN during the application window".
New suspension policy isn't that cheap… or is it?
The Uniform Rapid Suspension policy is a new prominent system that ICANN is planning to use in order to fight cybersquatters in new gTLDs. The URS will be used to protect trademarks, ICANN says.
Similar to the existing UDRP, URS is planned to be quicker, dealing with suspension – not transfer – of infringing domain names. No URS arbitration provider has yet been appointed, but ICANN’s Applicant Guidebook currently estimates a price of $300 per single-domain filing. In Munich, ICANN representatives repeatedly quoted a price between $300 and $500, according to Kevin Murphy of Domainincite.
Domain arbitration fees are to be split between the provider, which receives a third, and the law specialist himself, who receives the remaining two thirds. The price seems improbable compared to the average costs for an average lawyer in the US. The service introduced by ICM Registry deals with the same problems in .xxx gTLD, and it costs $1,300 in National Arbitration Forum fees while having pretty much the same mechanism: three days for a preliminary evaluation, and a word-count limit. With these industry precedents taken into account, even the $500 upper-end ICANN estimate may be optimistic.
Speedo versus the bisexual blogger
A swimwear giant Speedo is currently after a blogger after the latter had registered domain names relating to the Speedo brand and created some sites that are described as "salacious swimwear websites" by The Age newspaper.
One "aussiespeedoguy" Dave Evans, who describes himself as a "bisexual blogger", had, according to Speedo, "registered domain names containing the word 'Speedo'. Some featured 'images of persons wearing swimwear briefs and related offensive images'. Others featured nudity, offensive images and graphic sexual content. There was a commercial aspect, with some sites featuring subscription services and merchandising, and hyperlinks to other sites", Speedo said to The Age.
Now the company wants the court to restrain Evans, or anyone acting on his behalf, from registering domain names that contain the word Speedo. Speedo also demands that Evans has to transfer his existing domains to the company.
Landrush in .asia
The DotAsia Organization has recently launched the Landrush.asia website in order to promote adoption of native language domain names in Asia.
Landrush.Asia is an effort from DotAsia to help registrants from Asia and registrars around the world to offer registrations for Chinese, Japanese and Korean '.Asia' domain names. DotAsia is committed to promoting Internet development and adoption in Asia, as well as native language domain names. The company believes the IDNs are an important part of driving accessibility to the hundreds of millions of users coming online in Asia.
"As both a tool for direct navigation and for enhancing search engine optimization, IDN also helps businesses around the world to reach the Asian Internet marketplace, where users are actively searching online in their own language," said Edmon Chung, CEO of the DotAsia Organization.
The .Asia IDN Landrush will be open for another two weeks and will close on October 11, 2011.
Six French TLDs available in the EU
Any European citizen will be able to register his/her own domain in .fr and other TLDs operated by AFNIC (namely .wf , .tf , .re , .pm and .yt) starting December 6, 2011.
The opening of the .fr TLD to the European Union follows on from the appointment of AFNIC – on 2 March 2010 – as the Registry for the .fr extension. The contractual framework that accompanied the appointment was a novel one, including, within two years from the date of designation, the opening of the .fr to entities domiciled in the European Union.
An opening, AFNIC believes, would help promote the French territories as the extensions .wf (Wallis and Futuna), .tf (French Southern and Antarctic territories), .re (Reunion Island), .pm (St. Pierre and Miquelon), and .yt (Mayotte) will be also available to the European community under the same rules.
