The number of .fr domain names grew 5.8% in 2021 to end the year with 3,882,448 to continue the ccTLD’s boost during the COVID pandemic, according to Afnic’s Report of .FR in 2021 released last week. This compares to 3,670,372 .fr domain names registered at the end of 2020 when growth was 7.0%. In pre-pandemic times, 2019, growth was 3.7%.
Catching up on what’s been happening at EURid is the focus of today’s post. Over the last three months EURid has released their 2021 fourth quarter report, released 48,000 .eu domain names that were previously registered to British registrants, announced Greek character .eu domain name registrations will be deleted (Greek character domains should be registered under .ευ), continued COVID-related domain checks for nefarious registrations to March with their APEWS, published the first annual report of the Dynamic Coalition on Data and Trust, published results of their 2021 Registrar Satisfaction Survey (positive), continued support of the Surfrider Foundation Europe, they currently have a vacancy open for Legal Counsel while the CEO position has closed and announced an additional verification method for providing evidence of a registrant’s identity. Phew!
French regulators on Thursday fined Google and Facebook a total of more than 200 million euros ($226 million) for not making it as easy for people to opt out of online tracking as it is for them to accept it.
DNS Belgium have published an interview with a student whose Master’s thesis was on detecting fake web shops in the .be domain with machine learning.
Due to the ongoing pandemic, the European Commission has asked EURid, the .eu registry, to continue monitoring new .eu domain name registrations using their APEWS – Advanced Prevention and Early Warning System – platform for Covid-related keywords until 31 December 2021. The initial measures for these checks were set in early April 2020 in order to protect end-users from possible misuse of domain names.
Around 3.6 million websites across 464,000 domain names were taken offline after a major fire at an OVHcloud data centre site in Strasbourg last week, Netcraft is reporting. Around 184,000 websites using 59,600 .fr domain names were impacted, around 1.9% of all .fr domain names.
The United Kingdom left the European Union on 31 January 2020, but the 11 month transition period meant the UK was still bound by the EU’s rules. At the end of the transition period it was known businesses and citizens of the UK would lose the right to register .EU domain names. What very few realised was that due to the terms and conditions for .fr, they would lose the right to register and hold .fr domain names as well.
Google and a French publishers’ lobby said on Thursday they had agreed to a copyright framework for the U.S. tech giant to pay news publishers for content online, in a first for Europe.
CentralNic Group, the ever expanding London-based domain name and web services company, has announced its first foray into the French-speaking world with the acquisition of SafeBrands, a leading online brand protection software provider and corporate internet services provider.
France is resuming collection of a special tax on Big Tech companies like Amazon and Facebook despite the threat of U.S. retaliatory tariffs on French Champagne, cheese, handbags and other goods.