Tucows reported revenue growth in its domains business in the second quarter, despite its domains under management going down due to a major reseller. The company said last night that domains revenue was up 8% annually to $67.6 million at the end of June, with adjusted EBITDA for the segment going up 12% to $12.5 […] The post Reseller loss hi...

American vintners are worried that someone might steal their protected regional names in the next new gTLD round. The Napa Valley Vintners has written to ICANN to "express strong opposition to the creation of any generic top-level domain (gTLDs) that uses our distinctive name." The trade association asks that the names of wine-producing areas of [&...

For the record, I not proud of that headline. It doesn't even work in British English. But if I hadn't done it, some of you would have complained, and I want you to be happy. Rubber company Goodyear has become the latest new gTLD registry operator to tell ICANN to terminate a dot-brand. In this […] The post Goodyear tires of its dot-brand fir...

The ICANN community has kicked off its "review of reviews", a hopefully brief exercise in navel-gazing designed to free ICANN from even more navel-gazing over the longer term. The seven supporting organizations and advisory committees have put forth a proposal, which ICANN's top brass has accepted, for a Review of Reviews Cross Community Group (RoR...

Eleven notable domain registrars have abandoned ICANN's pilot Registration Data Request Service, substantially reducing its usefulness. In June, 11 accredited registrars pulled their support for the voluntary service, which is designed to give law enforcement, IP owners, and security researchers an easier way to request unredacted Whois records. Te...

ICANN has given a warning to Malaysian registrar WebNic, claiming that it has turned a blind eye to abuse reports in breach of new Registrar Accreditation Agreement rules. ICANN Compliance says the company, a subsidiary of Kuala Lumpur-based Qinetics, failed to take action to resolve abuse reports made against several domains it manages. Online rep...

Verisign's .com gTLD had a relatively strong showing in the first month of the third quarter, its zone file growing by over half a million domains. The TLD had 155,946,391 names in its zone at the start of August, up 526,205 names or 0.34% on the start of July. For comparison, the zone grew by […] The post .com off to strong start in Q3 first...

Malayasia's .my ccTLD has almost doubled in size since the start of the year, likely due to rule liberalizations and steep discounts at leading registrars. MYNIC, the local registry, is reporting 675,607 domains under management at the end of July. That's up 165,061 or 32% on the 510,546 reported at the end of June. A […] The post .my is grow...

ICANN has settled another sexual harassment lawsuit filed against it by a former employee. An ICANN spokesperson said the case, filed last August by 22-year meetings-team veteran Tanzanica King, "has been resolved". King did not immediately respond to a request for comment. King had asked for $77 million in damages, approximately half of ICANN's an...

Domain registrars have agreed to pay more in ICANN fees, after a supermajority vote. ICANN said today that registrars representing over two thirds of fees voted in favor of the increases, part of a package which Org reckons will add $4.6 million to its annual budget at first. The package of increases also comes with […] The post Registrars ag...

An effort by ICANN's At-Large community to force the Org to stick to its bylaws commitments to periodically review its accountability and transparency has failed after nobody else supported it. As I reported last month, ALAC petitioned its Empowered Community co-members to get ICANN to overturn its decision to delay Accountability and Transparency ...

It's becoming a truth universally acknowledged that when a gTLD sees a growth spike it's because the registry is running a promo and tens of thousands of machine-generated junk domains have been registered. That certainly seems to be true for June's biggest growers. The gTLDs the grew the fastest last month were .watch, .yachts, .autos, […] T...

ICANN is relocating its next meeting, scheduled for this October in Muscat, Oman, due to travel difficulties and uncertainties caused by the ongoing conflicts in the region. The meeting, ICANN's 2025 Annual General Meeting, will now take place in Dublin, Ireland from October 25 to 30, the same dates as the Oman meeting was meant […] The post ...

ICANN is heading into uncharted waters after a key community group flexed its powers to hold the Org accountable for a recent board decision. The At-Large Advisory Committee has become the first of ICANN's overseers to push for a formal objection to ICANN's decision to delay its next large-scale accountability review. In layman's terms, the […...

A surprising number of would-be back-end registry service providers have already been eliminated from ICANN's Registry Service Provider Evaluation Program for not submitting their applications in time. Program statistics for May recently published reveal that 19 potential RSPs were in the system but failed to submit their required information befor...

Why does .blockbuster still exist, seriously? Old-timers such as your humble correspondent will recall Blockbuster as the once world-conquering video rental chain that spectacularly failed to adapt to adapt to the era of Netflix and streaming and went almost completely out of business. I say almost because, as was widely reported a few years back, ...

Team Internet is to take over back-end duties for .co, after agreeing to take less than half as much as GoDaddy was charging. The London-based company has teamed up on a joint venture, Equipo PuntoCo, with Panama-based registrar CCI REG to sign a 10-year deal with Colombia's communications ministry, MINTIC. The handover will put an […] The po...

No new gTLDs should be added to the internet until ICANN develops policies addressing the abuse of bulk domain name registrations, according to the Governmental Advisory Committee. The GAC this afternoon drafted formal Advice for the ICANN board stating that policy work on bulk regs should get underway before ICANN 84, which takes place in […...

ICANN's program to offer heavily discounted new gTLD application fees to certain organizations has so far seen little uptake, and some governments are not happy about it. The Applicant Support Program offers up to 45 qualified applicants a discount of up to 85% on their application fees. That's worth almost $200,000 each. ICANN will also […] ...

The US government has come out against most of the new gTLDs likely to be applied for in next year's application round, saying they will contribute to the "global phishing problem". Then eyebrow-raising revelation came during an intervention from Susan Chalmers, the country's senior representative on the Governmental Advisory Committee, at the ICAN...

GoDaddy appears to have lost the last remnants of its Amazon back-end registry services deal. IANA records show that GoDaddy was recently replaced by Identity Digital as the technical contact for all of the remaining 12 gTLDs it was serving. The gTLDs in question are: .coupon, .song, .zero and the IDNs ., ., ., ., […] The post GoDaddy loses l...

Amazon is set to launch not two but at least three of its dormant new gTLDs in the next few months, according to ICANN documentation. As reported earlier this week, .talk and .fast are set to go to sunrise in August and general availability in September, and now they'll be joined by a third: .you. […] The post Third Amazon gTLD launch dates r...

.TOP Registry is off the ICANN naughty step, almost a year after it became the first registry to be hit by a public contract-breach notice over ICANN's latest rules on DNS abuse. The Org took the highly unusual step yesterday of publishing a blog post drawing attention to what it clearly sees as a big […] The post .TOP promises to play nice o...

A Los Angeles court has ruled against ICANN's attempt to have a former employee's sexual harassment lawsuit against it thrown out, which the plaintiff claims was an attempt to "silence" her. Tanzanica King, one of ICANN's longest-serving employees, sued ICANN last August, claiming that had been repeatedly sexually harassed by her superior and other...

ICANN has dragged its community to 60 cities around the world over the 26 years and 75 in-person meetings since its foundation, but that degree of globe-trotting could soon come to an end. A recently closed public comment period saw mixed responses to ICANN's plan to reform its meetings strategy, but there was little dissent […] The post An e...

Amazon Registry's launch of three gTLDs last week saw some registrants pay premium prices for .hot domain hacks. Zone file data shows domains such as moons.hot and slings.hot were registered towards to the end of the five-day Early Access Period, with the registrant likely paying close to a thousand bucks for each. cums.hot, longs.hot, moneys.hot, ...

A registrar that exclusively sells .gdn domain names seems to have gone AWOL, and ICANN Compliance is on its case. Dubai-based Intracom Middle East has been slapped with a breach notice alleging failures to operate a compliant RDAP server, publish the names of its officers, pay its ICANN fees, and escrow its registrant data. Some […] The post...

It's not exactly a U-turn, but ICANN has issued a statement clarifying that it's still committed to the values of "diversity and inclusion", if perhaps not the words themselves. CEO Kurt Lindqvist posted on the ICANN blog last night: While some terminology may have changed, the values that guide our work have not. Our actions […] The post ICA...

ICANN seems to have become the latest American organization to back away from commitments to "diversity" and "inclusion" in the wake of a universe now controlled by the whims of Donald Trump. The Org has recently started removing references to the D-word from its web site, sloppily editing its diversity-related web pages, replacing it with […...

Christian Kaufmann from Akamai has been reselected to represent the Address Supporting Organization on ICANN's board of directors. He's the incumbent in Seat 10, having first been picked by the ASO in 2022, but he faced competition this time from Australian Karl Kloppenborg of Reset Data. Kaufmann's current term ends at ICANN 84 in October, […...

Amazon Registry made three new gTLDs available to non-trademark-holders on Monday, and so far a handful registrants have taken up the offer of premium Early Access Period pricing. The five-day EAPs for .free, .hot and .spot see prices start high and decrease each day until May 17, when they'll settle at standard general availability pricing. [̷...

Singaporean drop-catching registrar Gname has added another 200 shell registrars to its collection, bringing its total to over 500. The 200 companies are named Gname 301 Inc through Gname 500 Inc. More accreditations means more connections to gTLD registries and a better chance to catch expired domains when they are deleted. Gname last boosted its ...

A domainer snapped up the .com matching the new Pope's name on the day the last Pope died. Cardinal Robert Prevost was elected this evening and took the name Pope Leo XIV. PopeLeoXIV.com was registered on the afternoon of April 21, a few hours after the news of Pope Francis' death was announced and after […] The post New Popes .com domain was...

DotMusic, the company that started selling .music domains seven months ago, has had a relatively successful launch, but one in four domains sold have not yet gone live. The latest registry transaction reports show that there were just over 30,000 registered .music domains at the end of January. Registry CEO Constantine Roussos tells us it's […...

Medistry, the .med registry with a really strange business model, is looking to normalize its practices and start competing with the cluster of healthcare-related gTLDs already on the market. The gTLD launched in 2016 and had almost 42,000 domains under management at the last count, which may sound like a pretty decent showing for a […] The p...

ICANN is the stop funding and supporting the Universal Acceptance Working Group, an independent outside group tasked with making sure domain names work everywhere on the internet regardless of TLD or language. With no money or staff support, Org has likely signed the death warrant for the UASG, but ICANN insists it's not turning its […] The p...

A lesson in the importance of redundancy in your DNS architecture? The ccTLDs for Spain and Portugal seem to be largely unaffected by an ongoing power cut that has seen both countries go into blackout (metaphorically) for the last several hours. At time of writing, no explanation for the the outage, which has also affected […] The post .es an...

Verisign's .com returned to growth in the first quarter after the company offered its registrars marketing programs that substantially discounted the retail price of domains. The company ended the quarter with 169.8 million .com and .net domains under management, a 777,000-name increase on the end of 2024. It's the first time it's reported quarterl...