Global Domain Name and Internet Policy News
A year of change at the top of the German-speaking ccTLD registries has culminated with Thomas Sutter being elected as the new Managing Director of the Switch Foundation, which has the responsibility for operating the registries for .ch (Switzerland) and .li (Liechtenstein).
Continue reading “Thomas Sutter Elected As New Managing Director of Switch”
DENIC released their annual update on the distribution of .de domain names both within Germany and throughout the world this week for 2022. Overall there was little change from 2021. Domain registrations in the former West Germany remained above that of the former East, with the divide increasing slightly, Berlin remained the city with the most domain names, Osnabruck the city, the state of Hamburg, and several districts in Bavaria remained those with the most domain names per capita.
The number of .de domain names registered grew by 460,000, or 2.75%, to 17,160,504 in 2021 cementing .de’s position as the world’s largest ccTLD. This was an increase over 2020 when .de domain registrations grew 376,000 or 2.30%.
ICANN’s meetings are starting to get back to normal with in-person attendances. In an announcement during the recent ICANN74 in The Hague, DENIC, eco and ICANN announced the ICANN78 annual general meeting will be held in Hamburg, Germany, in October 2023. And ICANN has scheduled the first Global Domains Division Summit since May 2020’s cancelled GDD Industry Summit in Paris for Los Angeles in November 2022.
The international popularity of Germany’s ccTLD .de continues to grow. There were 17,160,504 .de domains at the end of 2021 with 1,695,256 (9.88%) of these domains registered abroad, according to a DENIC report. Within one year, the number of international registrations has increased by 244,000, almost twice as much as in the previous year (2020: 128,000).
At DENIC’s ordinary General Assembly held Wednesday in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, the members of DENIC eG voted on the composition of the Cooperative’s bodies through 2025. There were three new members voted onto the Supervisory Board, while members of the current Executive Board were all returned.
As part of the orderly transition at the management level that’s happening at the .de ccTLD registry DENIC, Thomas Keller joined the DENIC Executive Board as new full-time member on 1 October. This follows his appointment in June by the Supervisory Board and DENIC General Assembly to succeed Dr. Jörg Schweiger, who announced earlier this year he was stepping down on 31 December.
Germany’s .de cruised past the 17 millionth domain milestone on 13 July 2021 with the registry, DENIC, naming the milestone domain as melba-stoffkreation.de. The passing of the milestone reinforces the German ccTLD’s position as Europe’s largest.
Germany’s .de increased registrations by 2.3% in 2020, an increase in registrations of a quarter of a million domain names, which was a noticeable uptick following several years of little growth, in a year when the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world and there was a move to more ecommerce.
Thomas Keller has been announced as the replacement of Dr. Jörg Schweiger as one of the two full-time members on DENIC’s Cooperative’s Executive Board, commencing on 1 January 2022. Schweiger, the current CEO, announced in December 2020 he will step down on 31 December 2021.