Mesh Digital, owner of the Domainmonster and Domainbox registrars, has been acquired by rival/partner Hosting Europe Group for an undisclosed sum. Operating mainly in the UK and Germany, the buyer says it is the largest privately owned hosting company in Europe, already the owner of large registrars including 123-reg/Webfusion, a Mesh reseller. “They’ve been a [...] Fortsæt læsning →

Irish small businesses overwhelmingly chose .com domains over .ie and .eu during the first year of a Blacknight Solutions web presence freebie initiative. Blacknight said today signed up 10,000 Irish small business customers through Getting Business Online, a partnership with Google and the local postal service, which it launched a year ago. The scheme, som [...] Fortsæt læsning →

Nominet, the .uk registry, is providing registry services for seven new generic top-level domain applications, according to CEO Lesley Cowley. Cowley told Nominet’s Annual General Meeting today that five of the applications are for dot-brands, a Nominet spokesperson said. The identities of the clients are currently protected by non-disclosure agreements. The other two bids [...] Fortsæt læsning →

French international law expert Alain Pellet has been appointed Independent Objector for the first round of ICANN’s new generic top-level domain program. Pellet has worked as a law professor at University Paris Ouest, Nanterre-La Défense since 1990, according to his 26-page resume (PDF). He’s also represented governments at the International Court of Justice and chaired [...] Fortsæt læsning →

Domain Security Company CEO Mary Iqbal claims that NCC Group took many of her ideas for a high-security .secure top-level domain following unproductive investment talks. Iqbal is also hinting at “potential future litigation” over the issue. The surprising claims, made in emails to DI today, follow the announcement last week that a new NCC subsidiary, [...] Fortsæt læsning →

International Olympic Committee lawyers have lodged an official appeal of ICANN’s latest decision to not grant it extra-extra special new gTLD protection. The IOC last week filed a Reconsideration Request asking the ICANN board to rethink an April 10 decision that essentially ignored the latest batch of “.olympic” special pleading. As previously reported, ICANN’s GNSO [...] Fortsæt læsning →

The proposed .secure generic top-level domain is now officially contested, after NCC Group, best known in the domain industry for its data escrow services, announced a bid. Newly formed NCC subsidiary Artemis Internet Inc, based in San Francisco, is the official applicant. According to Artemis chief technology officer Alex Stamos, who co-founded security testing [...] Fortsæt læsning →