From none in February, second level, or direct, .au registrations have taken off, reaching 716,278 as of 31 December 2022, or 17.2% of all .au domain names. The figures were part of auDA’s latest Quarterly Report for the fourth quarter of 2022.
There was a slight decrease in .ie registrations in 2022 of 0.3%, taking total registrations to 329,265 domain names in the .ie database at the end of the year across the island of Ireland, including both the Republic and the North.
EURid’s stable of domain names, .eu, .ею and .ευ, are suffering some post-COVID pandemic blues. Over the last three years registrations for EURid’s three top-level domains jumped 95,953. But it’s a story of a pandemic bump, where many TLDs saw a jump in registrations as businesses that weren’t online went online, along with new ventures for existing businesses, and a slight decline following.
A new gTLD hit the market this month with PIR launching .giving into General Availability on 20 January. .giving is aimed at fundraising and donating for not for profits for mission-driven organisations and philanthropic-minded individuals. The new gTLD is now publicly available for the first time to any mission-driven entity – regardless of non-profit status.
The long overdue launch of .au second level domains has been a success to date with over 700,000 registered as of the end of November 2022. And even retired Australian cricketers are getting in on the act. Listening to the ABC Radio cricket commentary today during coverage of the Australia v South Africa test match, former Australian players Shane Watson and Glenn McGrath were discussing Watson’s self-published book Winning the Inner Battle where Watson made reference to it only being available from shanewatson.au. Watson also has the .com.au domain, but it redirects to the .au.
ICANN Thursday announced the sudden resignation of Göran Marby, President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), effective immediately. Sally Costerton has been named as Interim President and CEO while a search is undertaken for Marby’s replacement. No reason was given for Marby’s sudden decision to resign.
Global domain name registrations have hovered around the 350 million market for the past three quarters, according to Verisign’s recent Domain Name Industry Briefs. The past three quarterly Briefs have seen total domain name registrations of 350.5 million (end Q1, 2022), 351.5 million (Q2, 2022) and in the most recent, 349.9 million (Q3, 2022).
To be representative of their community, of those who register their domain names, the Public Interest Registry has its PIR Advisory Council (PIRAC). The PIRAC is composed of leaders and activists from a broad spectrum of mission-driven organisations around the world. This week the .org registry announced the selection of five new members to its Advisory Council.
Seven domain names used in a recent cryptocurrency confidence crime, known as “pig butchering”, were seized by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia earlier this year. Through these seven domain names, five people were scammed losing $10 million.
EURid honoured the best of .eu, .ею and .ευ websites this week with a glittering event to celebrate the 2022 .eu Web Awards. Six categories were honoured at the event held in Mechelen, Belgium.