The COVID-19 pandemic has led to increased new domain registrations as well as median growth rates, the latter something which has been seldom seen over the last decade, a CENTR report out this week has found. As businesses of all sizes get online for the first time, develop new ideas and even cybercriminals, new domain names have been registered, particularly in ccTLDs.
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.
A couple of reports from the people behind .nz have shown the impact of COVID-19 (coronavirus) on New Zealanders and their internet use in recent months. Statistics for .nz shows increased DNS activity, including a surge in registrations that has taken registrations to close to 715,000.
Amendments to the .ee domain name regulations, the registrar contract and the rules of the Domain Disputes Committee (DVK) will come into force on 1 July the Estonian Internet Foundation announced last week.
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 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.
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 Usage
New .eu registrations jumped 15% in the first quarter of 2020 over the corresponding quarter in 2019 on the back of a 64% increase in registrations from Portugal and registrations related to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to EURid’s Q1 2020 Progress Report released this week.
CENTR has taken a look at how COVID-19 has impacted on the DNS, or rather how domain names using terms relating to COVID-19 have fared. While the end result is not much, what they have missed is the impact of domain names being registered because of the global pandemic but don’t refer COVID-19 or related terms.
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 June