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Close to 7.9 Million Domain Names Registered in Q2 2016

VeriSign, in its latest latest Domain Name Industry Brief, reports approximately 7.9 million new domain name registrations in the second quarter of 2016 which brings total number of domain name registrations to approximately 334.6 million across all top-level domains (TLDs) as of June 30, 2016. more

Market Flatlines After ICANN Introduces New gTLDs

The choices for consumers and business in Europe to get themselves online have never been so great. Social media, apps and blogsites all have made a lasting impression, and we are now in an increasingly crowded market with the addition of hundreds of new gTLDs. So how has all this affected growth and market shares among domain names in Europe? more

Domain Registrations on Decline, Google and Lower Ad Spendings Blamed

According to recent reports, the total number of new domain name registrations in the third quarter of 2008 reached 11.5 million, pushing the total number of domain names registered in total across all Top-Level Domain Names (TLDs) to 174 million. While the growth continues, the newly released Domain Report by Verisign, indicates a "a decline of new registrations by 2%t from second quarter and 2% from third quarter 2007, driven by declines in both gTLD and ccTLD growth." The decline in new domain name registrations are found to be partly due new changes made by Google to its AdSense program -- the report explains... more

ICANN Regional Meeting and More Questions on nTLDs

Congratulations and thanks to ICANN for hosting the North America Regional meeting at the Sheraton in downtown Toronto, Canada. This event was done first class and was in my opinion a highly successful meeting... At this regional ICANN meeting many interesting topics were covered. Some topics though not at the foremost of my mind, surprisingly were not only highly interesting but very informative. more

Domain Name Variants Still Won’t Work

ICANN has spent years trying to figure out what to do with domain name variants, strings that look different but mean the same thing, for some definition of "the same." They've been trying to deal with them in second level domains for a decade, and are now working on rules to allow variant top-level domains. Unfortunately, variants don't work. The problem isn't putting them in the DNS; it's that once they're in the DNS, they don't work anywhere else. more

9th Registration Operations Workshop (ROW), June 16th, 2020, Online

The Registration Operations Workshop (ROW) was conceived as an informal industry conference that would provide a forum for discussion of the technical aspects of registration operations in the domain name system and IP addressing. The 9th ROW will be held online on Tuesday, June 16th, 2020 at 13h00-16h00 UTC. more

NTIA Expresses Support for New gTLD Program

Kevin Murphy reporting in DomainIncite: "NTIA boss Larry Strickling has come out in support of ICANN and its new top-level domains program, warning that its opponents 'provide ammunition' to authoritarian regimes. Speaking in Washington DC yesterday, Strickling warned that organizations fighting to put a stop to the new gTLD program risk provoking a UN takeover of the internet." more

.COM - a Return to Balance at Mid-2023

Here are the mid-year trends of the the .COM Top Level Domain. Our analysis is based on data transmitted by Verisign, the company tasked with the management of .COM, to ICANN, as of 30/06/23. To conduct our study, we will be using two performance indicators taken from the reports sent by Verisign to ICANN and published in its 'Registry transactions Reports'1: stocks at 30/06 and 31/12 of each year and monthly creations consolidated over a 12-month period. more

Domain Name Registrations Pass 205 Million

The global base of Internet domain names grew by nearly 3.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2010, according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief, published by VeriSign, Inc. According to the report, the fourth quarter of 2010 closed with a base of 205.3 million domain name registrations across all Top Level Domains (TLDs), or a 1.7 percent increase over the third quarter. Registrations have grown by 12.1 million, or 6.3 percent year over year. more

VeriSign to Recognize Innovators, Leaders That Have Shaped the First 25 Years of .Com

For the upcoming 25th anniversary of .com Top-Level Domain, VeriSign, the registry operator of the domain will launch a year-long initiative to celebrate the event. From the announcement: "In March 1985, the first .com domain was registered, igniting the birth of the consumer Internet that, 25 years later, continues to transform communications, commerce and our society as a whole. Beginning in March 2010, VeriSign, the long-time operator of the .com domain, will lead an industry-wide initiative to recognize the innovators and leaders that have shaped the first 25 years of .com and in doing so transformed our economy and society. The celebration of "25 Years of .com" will kick off with a policy-focused event in Washington, DC on March 16." more

10 Years of ICANN

ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, was officially incorporated on 30 September 1998 as a nonprofit public benefit corporation. Headquartered in Marina Del Rey, California, United States, ICANN was assigned to oversee a number of Internet-related tasks originally performed directly on behalf of the U.S. government by other organizations, such as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). Back in 1998, there was only one domain name registrar; now there are over 900 ICANN-accredited registrars in the world and over 168 million domain names registered. more

Food for Thought on the “New TLD” Business Models

There is always some degree of confusion in discussions about the "new TLDs". Some points of view try to be optimistic, others on the contrary only highlight the bad news, and most refer indistinctly to the "new TLDs" as if they did not break down into different segments, each of which obeys dynamics and constraints of its own. The purpose of this post is to provide some food for thought and to shed some light on those dynamics and constraints... more

Back to the Future Part IV: The Price-Fixing Paradox of the DNS

GenX-ers may remember spending a summer afternoon at the movie theater and seeing the somewhat corny but beloved antics of Marty McFly and Doc as they used a souped-up Delorean to travel the space-time continuum. In Back to the Future Part II, Doc and Marty travel into the future, where the bullying, boorish Biff causes a time-travel paradox when he steals the Delorean and takes a joyride into the past to give his younger self a sports almanac containing the final scores of decades worth of sporting events. more

The Domain Name System: A Cryptographer’s Perspective

As one of the earliest protocols in the internet, the DNS emerged in an era in which today's global network was still an experiment. Security was not a primary consideration then, and the design of the DNS, like other parts of the internet of the day, did not have cryptography built in. Today, cryptography is part of almost every protocol, including the DNS. And from a cryptographer's perspective, as I described in my talk at last year's International Cryptographic Module Conference (ICMC20), there's so much more to the story than just encryption. more

So Many Nonprofits Have Trusted Dot Org for So Long

ICANN's Board will meet soon, perhaps even tomorrow, to discuss the dot-org domain sale. It is a pivotal inflection point in the history of Internet governance. When Internet Society (ISOC) was awarded the dot-org domain over ten other bids in 2002, evaluators voiced concerns about their ability to steward it. The report explains: Some on the Committee expressed concern, however, that ISOC's associations extend only to the networking/connectivity community and not to a broader base... more