MMX says it has sold a package of premium .luxe domain names for $100,000. The registry announced this week that it has sold “a small number of .luxe names for a combined value of $100,000 in a single trade”. Depending on what that “small number” is, the individual per-domain value may not be all that [...] Continue reading →

One or more of the major gTLD registries are publishing Whois query data that may be “fabricated”, according to some of ICANN’s top security minds. The Security and Stability Advisory Committee recently wrote to ICANN’s top brass to complain about inconsistent and possibly outright bogus reporting of Whois port 43 query volumes. SSAC said: it [...] Continue reading →

ICANN has yet to open the final (?) public comment period on Amazon’s .amazon gTLD applications, but it’s been receiving comments anyway. As I blogged at the weekend, ICANN has now given all but final approval to .amazon, and the last hurdle is 30 days of public comments, on Amazon’s proposed Public Interest Commitments. I [...] Continue reading →

The .com zone file passed the 140 million domain milestone for the first time today. According to Verisign’s own count, today there are 140,016,726 .com names in the file. Yesterday, it had 139,979,307 names. It’s taken since November 2017 to add the last 10 million names. Adding registered names not in the zone, what Verisign [...] Continue reading →

Top Level Design has announced the launch date for its forthcoming .gay gTLD, and the timing couldn’t be more symbolic. It’s picked October 11 as the date for general availability, which also happens to be National Coming Out Day in the US. National Coming Out Day, which has been observed by gay rights organizations since [...] Continue reading →

The domain name’s Bond, dot Bond… or something. Sorry. ShortDot, the registry behind the .icu top-level domain, has acquired a dot-brand gTLD and plans to repurpose it as a generic. The seller is Bond University, a newish, smallish university in Queensland, Australia, and the gTLD is .bond. ShortDot co-founder Kevin Kopas confirmed the deal to [...] Continue reading →

CentralNic is living up to its self-described role as an industry “consolidator” with the acquisition of Australian domain wholesaler TPP Wholesale. The company, assuming it manages to find the financial backing, will pay AUD 24 million ($16.5 million) for the business, currently a unit of ARQ Group (formerly known as Melbourne IT). TPP has 14,000 [...] Continue reading →