Webcentral Group have offloaded its 50% share in the Australian registrar, aftermarket outlet and drop catcher NetAlliance, whose best-known brand is drop catcher and aftermarket outlet NetFleet, for A$500,000 (US$345,000) in cash to David Warmuz’s Trellian.
[news release] Registration is now open for the 2020 LAC Domain Names Week, which will be held virtually. The theme of this year’s event is “Understanding the Ecosystem and Learning New Opportunities.”
GoDaddy launched GoDaddy Corporate Domains Tuesday, a rebranded rethought Brandsight, the corporate domain management company GoDaddy bought in February 2020.
auDA have confirmed Notices of Breach have been issued to the NetAlliance group of registrars – NetAlliance, NetAlliance Domain No 1 And Ziphosting – whose best known brand is NetFleet, for failing to meet the Accreditation Criteria outlined in their respective Registrar Agreements. I broke this story in late October when sources told me the breach notice was originally issued, however auDA is only claiming they issued the breach last week. I also believe there has been action taken in Australia’s Federal Court recently by various parties involved in this saga.
Consolidation in the domain name industry is continuing at a great pace, the latest being the Web.com Group announcing they acquired Freeparking, New Zealand’s number one domain name registrar and web hosting provider last week. The announcement, according to Web.com, rounds out their strategic expansion into the Australian, New Zealand, and Southeast Asian markets with its acquisition of Dreamscape Networks last year. They also failed in their takeover of the Australian-based Webcentral Group in September.
GoDaddy Inc. reported its financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2020, and announced the departure of Andrew Low Ah Kee, Chief Operating Officer, who is leaving to take a President role in a different segment of the technology space. A financial highlight was a growth in bookings and revenue during the quarter with 17% year over year growth, while domains revenue was $387.4 million, up 12.2%, and hosting and presence revenue was $302.4 million, up 6.1% year over year. There was also another quarter of over 400,000 new customers for the quarter, taking the total of new customers to 1 million in 2020 to date.
The .ie registry is celebrating 20 years in business with a rebrand and a €20,000 giveaway to registrants.
The 2020 Nordic Domain Days has been postponed until further notice due to the COVID-19 situation. The fifth of the annual event for the Nordic domain name conferences was originally scheduled to be held in Stockholm in September, was postponed and now postponed indefinitely.
2021’s Domain Pulse is the latest conference to fall victim to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Originally scheduled to be held in Beethoven’s home town, the German city of Bonn, in February and hosted by DENIC, it will now be held in February 2022.
A breach notice is believed to have been issued by the Australian domain name regulator auDA to a local registrar with many thousands of domain names under management impacted. It even has the potential to indirectly impact the recent 5GN takeover of Webcentral, according to rumours swirling around the Australian domain name industry this week. The reasons for the breach notice are unknown, but it needs to be complied with urgently, possibly as soon as Friday this week.