New TLDs

Donuts to Acquire Afilias

Donuts and Afilias announced today that Donuts is acquiring Afilias in a deal that is expected to close in December 2020 for an undisclosed amount. The combined entities will support over 25 million domain names spanning well over 400 TLDs. The deal will not include certain Afilias businesses, such as the mobile software and registrar businesses, which will remain with Afilias' original group of investors.

A New Project Called Handshake Wants to Decentralize DNS, Says It’s Unlike Previous Attempts

An entity called the Handshake Network claims its newly developed open source project offers advantages over the traditional naming and signature systems.

ICANN’s Recent .amazon Decision Denounced by Presidents of Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia

The presidents of Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia have criticized the recent ICANN decision to grant global retailer Amazon the rights to the .amazon top-level domain.

ICANN Says Amazon Inc’s Application for .AMAZON TLD Can Proceed Following 30 Days of Public Comment

The giant online retailer Amazon Inc is one step away from winning the .AMAZON top-level domain name after a 7-year battle with the eight Latin American countries.

WordPress Parent Company Automattic, and .Blog Operator Switches Registry From Nominet to CentralNic

The operator of .blog top-level domain, Knock Knock WHOIS There, LLC, which is a subsidiary of Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com and Jetpack, announced on Wednesday that it is "moving into the next phase of .blog."

Domain Names in 9 Indian Scripts to Be Added to the Root Servers by June

Internet root servers will soon allow domain name registrations in nine Indian scripts, according to Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG).

ICANN Postpones Amazon Domain Decision, Crusade Continues Between Amazon Nations and Amazon Inc.

ICANN on Monday extended the deadline to April for Amazon basin nations to reach a deal with the tech giant Amazon Inc in their seven-year battle over the .amazon domain name.

The Pace of Domain Growth Has Slowed Considerably, Reports CENTR

The global Top-Level Domain market is currently estimated at 348 million domains across all recorded TLDs. Although the overall domain count has continued to grow in all regions and types, the Council of European National Top-Level Domain Registries (CENTR) reports that the pace of growth has slowed considerably.

Domain Registrars Given a Six-Month Deadline to Implement Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP)

ICANN issued an industry-wide six-month deadline for the deployment of the Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP) - a replacement for the WHOIS protocol.

ICANN Appoints Cyrus Namazi as VP of Global Domains Division

ICANN has appointed Cyrus Namazi for its newly created position of Senior Vice President of the Global Domains Division (GDD).

Google Launches .dev Top-Level Domain

Google today launched another new top-level domain, .dev, to the public aimed as a secure domain for developers and tech community.

ICANN Begins Publishing Monthly Reports on Generic Top-Level Domain Security Threats

ICANN has published its first new monthly report providing statistics and insight into security threats to generic top-level domains (gTLDs).

ICANN Denies Reduction of Annual Fees for Struggling New TLD Operators

ICANN has denied a request by new top-level domain operators to reduce the $25,000 annual fee.

ICANN Gives .amazon Talks a March Deadline

ICANN's board of directors has voted to put a March deadline on discussions concerning .amazon top-level domain.

2019 Will Be the Year of New gTLDs, Wired Predicts

In an article published today on the state of new top-level domains, Wired says "2019 could be the year of the obscure domain name."