[news release] ICANN org’s Planning and Finance teams will be hosting a webinar on 27 April 2021 at 15:00 UTC to discuss prioritizing ICANN’s work and the proposed Supplemental Fund for Implementation of Community Recommendations.
[news release] ICANN Monday announced that applications for the NextGen@ICANN program at ICANN72 are now being accepted.
The European Union’s top-level domain .eu turned 15 this week, celebrating entering adolescence Wednesday.
This week GoDaddy Registry announced it was expanding its registry services with the acquisition of more than 30 new generic top-level domains (new gTLDs), including 28 from Minds + Machines, .club and .design, plus the provision of registry services for .basketball and .rugby and Ally Financial’s branded .ally domain. The move will see the company add over 3 million domains under management to their portfolio, although GoDaddy Registry already provides registry services for .club’s 1.1 million domain names. Upon close of the acquisitions, it will see GoDaddy Registry own, manage or operate more than 240 top-level domains, with more than 14 million DUM.
Ethos Capital announced Thursday it has completed an investment to acquire a controlling interest of Donuts Inc. from Abry Partners. Based in Seattle, Washington, Donuts holds the world’s largest portfolio of top-level domains with 260 new gTLDs as well as providing registry services for a number of other top-level domains (both gTLDs and ccTLDs) through both its Donuts and Afilias brands.
An Extraordinary General Meeting held Monday saw four of Nominet’s directors including Chair Mark Wood removed from their positions, while CEO and board member Russell Haworth stood down on Sunday, the day before the meeting. The Board clear-out follows a campaign for reform of the .uk ccTLD registry by Public Benefit .UK.
Nominet’s CEO Russell Haworth has become the sacrifice in the ongoing battles over management of the .uk ccTLD. In an announcement today, Nominet said Haworth “intends to step down from the Board and relinquish his duties as CEO. Russell will complete a short transition, arrangements for which details are being finalised. The board will announce interim leadership measures in due course.” Whether Haworth’s sacrifice minimises the fallout coming from today’s EGM remains to be seen.
Nominations are open for the ICANN Community Excellence Award and are closing soon. ICANN reminded the community this week the nomination period will close on 29 March 2021. Winner(s) will be announced at the ICANN71 Virtual Policy Forum, scheduled for 14-17 June 2021.
Another in-person ICANN meeting has bitten the dust with the coordinator of the internet’s naming system announcing last week ICANN71 will be held as a Virtual Public Meeting due to the continuing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The ICANN71 Policy Forum was scheduled to be held in The Hague, Netherlands, from 14-17 June 2021 and will be the fifth ICANN meeting in a row to be held virtually.
Around 3.6 million websites across 464,000 domain names were taken offline after a major fire at an OVHcloud data centre site in Strasbourg last week, Netcraft is reporting. Around 184,000 websites using 59,600 .fr domain names were impacted, around 1.9% of all .fr domain names.