Google has announced a Sunrise period to its .meet new gTLD, but when the Sunrise and Trademark Claims periods finish, Google will be the sole registrant of all domain names.
Google Gets Ready To .MEET
Category Archives: New TLDs
News about new generic Top Level Domains
.PLACE Becoming Generic, Not Restricted, gTLD On 1 June
Donuts announced this week their .place new gTLD will become a generic top-level domain on 1 June, dropping the current eligibility restrictions.
Some Of The World’s Big Brands Get Their .DEALER
Some of the world’s most recognised brands – Amazon, Apple, Beyoncé – have scored their .dealer domain name during the launch of the new gTLD’s Sunrise period that began on 25 March, while General Availability commences on 24 June.
.CLUB Celebrates Sixth Birthday With A Series Of Highlights Including Number One New gTLD By Usage
It’s been six years since the first of the new gTLDs was introduced in early 2014. The first to launch was .shabaka (“network” in Arabic) in February quickly followed by 4 of Donuts’ new gTLDs while .club wasn’t far behind launching in May 2014. Since then .club has gone from strength to strength and today is the eighth largest with 1.369 million registrations, having peaked at just over 1.65 million in January, July and August 2019.
Continue reading .CLUB Celebrates Sixth Birthday With A Series Of Highlights Including Number One New gTLD By UsageRegistrations Now Open For Virtual ICANN68 In June
Registrations are now open for the ICANN68 Policy Forum scheduled for 22-25 June 2020. Originally to be held physically in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic it has now been held as a virtual meeting instead.
Continue reading Registrations Now Open For Virtual ICANN68 In JuneDonuts Moves Backend Registry For All New gTLDs To Amazon’s Cloud
Donuts has migrated the backend operations of all their 241 new gTLDs and 3.777 million domain names to the cloud using Amazon Web Services. It is the first major backend registry operator to migrate an existing on-premises backend to the cloud.
Announcing the move, Donuts says moving to the cloud has many strategic benefits for the largest new gTLD operator by TLDs and its registrar partners. The transition will allow Donuts to scale platform capacity according to the growth of its registrations while leveraging the redundancy and resiliency of the AWS platform. By leveraging the power of the cloud and AWS services, Donuts can expand its operational footprint in new geographies and deploy cloud services to efficiently process and analyse registry data for Donuts and its partners at a competitive cost structure.
“Our teams have mastered new technologies through this migration process. With this cloud migration, Donuts is positioned to take on new growth and innovation initiatives with confidence, knowing that our team of engineers and data scientists are up to the challenge,” reported Donuts CEO, Akram Atallah.
“We’ve fully automated the platform environment build-up, allowing us to set up a new registry platform in any geography with the push of a button,” says Benoit Levac, VP of Product and Engineering at Donuts. “This strengthens our position within the market as acquisition opportunities present themselves during this market consolidation.”
As one of the most innovative registries in the new gTLD era, Donuts is committed to maintaining the best platform and technology stack. Cloud enablement provides the scale and agility required to seize business opportunities ahead. Donuts plans to continue to optimise the new cloud platform to increase security, reliability, and adapt to the ever-changing technology landscape.
.gay Donates $34,400 to LGBTQ Organisations GLAAD and CenterLink
The .gay team at Top Level Design announced Tuesday that they made a $34,400 donation to support vital LGBTQ community services at GLAAD and CenterLink: The Community of LGBT Centers!
.gay is currently open to trademark holders and brands, but will become available to the general public in the northern hemisphere’s autumn of 2020. Through .gay‘s business model of giving to LGBTQ causes, they have already raised $17,200 for GLAAD and $17,200 for CenterLink during their first .gay Sunrise Phase, which kicked off in February and just ended last week.
In addition to creating a completely new medium for LGBTQ visibility, .gay has made this industry-first commitment of donating 20% of all new registration revenue to its LGBTQ nonprofit partners, which will help address key issues facing these communities. All registrars are also encouraged to match the .gay donation at the retail level or make their own pledges in support for LGBTQ people. This first $34,400 donation is the first of many more to come as the .gay brand launches and grows.
Beyond increasing visibility for LGBTQ communities and directly supporting organisations through charitable giving, the brand is centred around rejecting the status quo and creating a safer internet for LGBTQ people through its “.gay Rights Protections” policy, which ensures that registrars and domains will represent LGBTQ people appropriately and respond to reported instances of hate or harassment on all .gay sites. The registry is committed to setting a higher industry standard by taking steps to ensure that all .gay domain names remain free of harassment, hate speech, and anti-LGBTQ content, as well as providing specific remedies for domains that do not uphold these standards.
.gay is also directly supporting broader LGBTQ communities between April and August of this year by providing early access to a limited number of .gay names free of charge. Any LGBTQ organisation, community group, individual, or small business looking to foster digital pride and connection in advance of the official .gay launch this fall can fill out this form to begin the process of securing their .gay name at no cost to them: https://www.ohhey.gay/gay-giveaway
.BRANDS Grow 20% In 2019: Neustar Report
It’s arguable that .brands are the success story of new gTLDs and there are now 550 .brand new gTLDs in use around the world, with, according to the latest .brands Industry Report from Neustar, growth of 20% in 2019.
The big statistics in the report for the 2019 calendar year are there were 18,722 domain names in these 550 .brand new gTLDs, of which 12,509 (19% growth) were in use as of 31 December and 25 .brands were used for the first time in 2019.
There were also 9,426 redirecting domain names, a growth of 22% and almost two-thirds (64%) of all .brands are now in use, 3,083 resolving, up 15%.
Looking at how many domains each .brand had, 3 had more than 1,000, 7 had more than 500 and 8 had more than 250. The 3 with more than 1,000 domain names were .dvag with 3,575, .mma (1,859) and .audi (1,603). Neustar’s own .neustar had 655 domain names, making it the seventh largest.
The top .brands with resolving domain names were a different list with .audi being the largest, then .seat and .bmw while there were 5 sectors with more than 1,000 domain names – banking and financial with 5,633, automotive (3,661), insurance (2,370), information technology (1,702) and industrial (1,036).
Want to know what’s going on in the world of .brands? Our .brands Industry Report is now live and contains all the stats you need AND key articles like my interview with KMPG on their success and lessons learned since they dropped .com and moved to home.kpmg
The sixth edition of the Report goes in depth looking KPMG “who bravely chose to drop their .com and move their global footprint to the home.kpmg web address. This was a significant undertaking and it’s significance on the global .brand stage should not be underestimated. Nearly a year after their transition, we check back in with KPMG to learn more about their journey; specifically – the benefits, the challenges, and the impact to their SEO ranking.”
The report also explores “cost reduction and portfolio management efficiency opportunities” which they say “should be of particular interest to brand portfolio managers.”
To download and read the report in full, see: https://www.home.neustar/lp/brand-report/index.html
gTLD Registrants Get Temporary Renewal Relief If Facing Hardship Resulting From COVID-19 Pandemic
Registrants of domain names in gTLDs have been given relief by ICANN should they be facing hardship resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes concerns about the ability of registrants to renew their domain names in a timely manner given current circumstances.
To ease the burden, ICANN announced in a blog post last week they will be invoking section 3.7.5.1 of the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement for the second time. This clause permits registrars to temporarily forebear from cancelling domain name registrations that were unable to be renewed as a result of a natural disaster.
The post by Russ Weinstein, Senior Director, gTLD Accounts and Services, notes “the COVID-19 pandemic once again highlights the potential need for a policy initiative to protect registrants when they are unable to renew their domains as a result of natural disasters or other extraordinary circumstances. In the interim, we encourage contracted parties to take these circumstances into consideration when reviewing renewal delinquencies.”
.BARCELONA Maintains Total Registrations Of Over 5,500
Barcelona became the first Spanish city to launch its own top-level domain when it launched .barcelona in March 2016 and almost four years later, as of the end of 2019, has 5,684 domains under management.
While total registration numbers are more or less the same as 12 months before, there were 1,071 new domains and 4,504 renewals. This means the renewal rate is 83.15%, in line with other leading city domains such as .nyc, .london and .berlin.
The .barcelona domain is open to everyone. All organisations, businesses, individuals and administrations with some sort of link or activity within Barcelona’s area of influence can register .barcelona domains. The money made through the sale of .barcelona domains is also reinvested in projects with a social impact, such as the .barcelona training programme in the neighbourhoods to reduce the digital divide.