Domain Name News: July 4 Week in Review

DomainSherpaJuly 4, 2014 | Updated: December 9, 2015 0

Domain Name Week in Review Every Friday, DomainSherpa.com provides you with a hand-selected, editorially-based review of the weekly news. In this summary, you will find the latest articles and videos produced by DomainSherpa staff and contributors. You will also find links to the best news articles in the domain name industry – so you don’t have to spend your time searching for news or reading something that was not worth your time.

This Week’s DomainSherpa Interview

VIDEO: Google TLDs, Their New Registar and Their Army of Developers
Google is spending part of their billions in profits on 100 new top-level domains and launching a new registrar, Google Domains.

In this presentation, given at Google I/O 2014, Google provides an overview of their domain name plans for the future.

Watch The Full Show Now »

Additional Resources

DomainSherpa Discussion: Google Domains; Beliebers Don’t Buy .Tattoo; Fight or Flight UDRPs…
This is the show where we discuss domain name industry news with a panel of veterans and thought leaders.

In this DomainSherpa Discussion:
* Google shakes up the registrar industry with their announcement. What can we expect?
* Justin Bieber plugs a .tattoo domain name to his 300,000+ followers with a surprising result
* What new gTLDs did the Sherpas register in: .ink, .supplies, .supply, .tools, .industries, .parts, .wang, .fishing, .vodka, .rodeo, .country, .cooking. ,horse, .fish, .vision, .report
* US and UK lag behind China in new gTLD awareness. What does that mean to investors?
* NetNames’ put out their Internet 2020 report. Supposedly more new gTLDs be registered per day than .com and .net combined in the next few years? I call BS. What do the Sherpas think?
* Verisign downgraded by Wells Fargo based on slowing sales. Should you be worried too?
* Mike Berkens wins two UDRPs recently. I want to know: at what cost does it take to defend? What’s the business thought process of “defend versus walk away”?
* Question from audience on flipping names
* And much more!

Read/Watch »

This Week’s News in Review

Google Adult Ad Ban Now in Effect – 03-Jul-14
CNBC is reporting that the Google Advertising Ban on Adult domain names is now in effect. We reported earlier this month that Google was going to impose new restrictions on adult advertising, which some believed amounted almost to a ban on advertising. Today CNBC is reporting that “Google is getting out of the porn advertising…
Minds + Machines Files Patent for “Domain Name Registration and Resale” – 03-Jul-14
Patent describes system similar to AfternicDLS and SedoMLS but at the registry level. Minds + Machines Chairman Fred Krueger has filed a patent application (pdf) for the resale of domain names, titled “Domain Name Registration and Resale”. Here’s part of the description: Internet registries operate in the primary market for domain names and not in…
GoDaddy Wants to Patent Way of Onboarding New TLDs – 03-Jul-14
GoDaddy files four patents related to adding new TLD options to a registrar. GoDaddy has filed four patent applications describing methods for adding new top level domain names to a registrar’s offerings. Each top level domain name a registrar offers comes with its own restrictions, GoDaddy explains: A large part of the difficulty in adding…
.xyz Becomes 1st New gTLD to Pass 250,000 Registrations – 03-Jul-14
.XYZ has become the first new gTLD to pass 250,000 registrations. The official count according to ntldstats.com, 250,731 domain names. Of that amount 217, 752. are registered at Network Solutions representing over 86% of all registrations. As we always note, the vast majority of these .XYZ registrations at Netsol are free and being pushed into…
Shoebuy.com’s UDRP Record Drops to 3-4 – 03-Jul-14
Company loses a UDRP for the fourth time in just 7 tries. Online shoe retailer ShoeBuy.com might need to re-read the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Policy. It just lost its fourth UDRP. It’s only won three times. This latest loss comes courtesy of typosquatting recovery firm CitizenHawk, which helped ShoeBuy.com go after ShowBuy.com. Yes, w…
2nd Level .UK Domain Name Registrations Top 100,000 – 03-Jul-14
A strong sales month for .UK. Over 100,000 second level domain names under .uk have been registered since they became available for registration last month, .uk registry Nominet announced today. About two-thirds have been registered by people who have matching third level .uk domain names. They are given first rights to the second level domain…
Another Poor 1st Day for This Weeks New gTLDs: .vision 905; .report 845; .fish 542 – 03-Jul-14
Three new gTLD’s went into their first day of general availability yesterday and it was another underwhelming week. The totals include Sunrise registration and those domains registered in the Early Access Program .Vision 905 .Report 845 .Fish 542 A total of less than 2,500 for the three strings However especially in .vision there were quite…
U.S. Winemakers Rebel Against Their Government – 03-Jul-14
Groups representing thousands of US winemakers have come out against .wine and .vin, bringing their government’s position on the two proposed new gTLDs into question. Seven regional associations, representing close to 2,000 wineries, issued a statement last night raising “strong objections” to the gTLDs with “non-existent to grossly insufficient safeguards”. The joint statement says: If…
New TLD Luxury.estate Sells for $50k – 02-Jul-14
A new high water mark for a domain sale in a new TLD? Hot of the heels of news that eat.club sold for $20,000, DomainHoldings announced today that it brokered the sale of Luxury.Estate for a whopping $50,000. The Luxury.Estate sale is different from the eat.club one because an early domain registrant cashed in big,…
Owner of RuralLiving.com, a $7 Billion Company, Loses UDRP On RuralLiving.com – 02-Jul-14
AgStar Financial Services, ACA (“Complainant”), just lost its bid to grab the domain name RuralLiving.com from Ashantiplc Ltd, who was represented by John Berryhill, Esq. , who also in full disclosure represents our company in UDRP cases. The complainant owns the domain name Ruraliving.com (missing the other letter “L”) along with a trademark on the…
GoDaddy Gets a New Ad Agency – 02-Jul-14
GoDaddy announced today that it has hired Barton F. Graf 9000 as its U.S. advertising agency-of-record. A new campaign featuring television and online ads is set to debut in September. Creative details are not being revealed, but the commercials will…
Democrat Congressman Sides With France On .wine – 02-Jul-14
US Representative Anna Eshoo has written to ICANN’s top brass to express “deep concerns” about the .wine and .vin new gTLDs and urge that they be permanently killed off. In a letter (pdf) to CEO Fadi Chehade, Eshoo wrote: it’s my understanding that the .wine and .vin gTLDs have been met with fierce opposition from…
.menu Auction Ends With No Domains Sold – Another Bad New gTLD Auction – 02-Jul-14
Namejet had a .Menu auction that featured 32 .menu domain names but none of them sold. 6 of the domains got at least the opening $69 bid but none of them reached the reserve. Proteindiet.menu got the highest bid with…
Domaintools Partners With Malformity Labs to Offer Domain Name Visualizing Data – 02-Jul-14
DomainTools announced a partnership with Malformity Labs that already incorporates DomainTools’ extensive database into the Maltego transform server and can immediately accelerate your investigations. The availability of a Maltego transform server makes it incredibly easy to visualize the relationships among domains…
How English Speakers Can Invest in Chinese IDNS – 02-Jul-14
TLD Registry releases tool for discovering Chinese terms available for registration. Last week in London I sat down with TLD Registry, the company behind the Dot Chinese Online (.在线) and Dot Chinese Website (.中�-��’) domain names. These IDNs have been a success so far, with over 50,000 registrations combined. They are easily within the top…
.club Domain Tops Last Week’s End User Domain Name Sales – 02-Jul-14
Catering company goes clubbing. Sedo’s top sale last week was MM.com at $1.2 million. But it’s not an end user sale. It appears to have been purchased by the owners of Chinese domain marketplace 4.cn. Instead, this week’s top end user sale honors go to a new TLD. .Club sold Eat.Club $20,000 to employee meal…
USPTO Grants Two Patents On DNS Including “Systems & Methods for Providing DNS Services” – 02-Jul-14
Two Patents were granted yesterday by the USPTO on DNS Nominum, Inc received a patent on Systems and methods for providing DNS services A system for providing a Domain Name System (DNS) service may include providing an agent for installation on a subscriber device. The subscriber device may be connected to the DNS service via…
UGN.com Under Same Ownership for 10+ Years Hit With UDRP – 02-Jul-14
The three letter domain name UGN.com which appears to have been owned or under the control of Boca Database Services, Inc since at least 2004, has been hit with a UDRP. The domain name is not resolving. The last entry that Screenshots.com has for the domain name is from 2009, and it looks to be…
Techcrunch.com Wins Rights to The The Hack Domain Techcrun.ch in UDRP – 02-Jul-14
A one member UDRP panel just awarded the domain name hack of Techcrun.ch to the publisher of Techcrunch.com which also owns the domain name TechCrunch.ch For those that don’t know a domain hack is where a registrant uses a domain extension, typically a two letter country code (ccTLD) to spell a word. In this case…
50,000 .london Applications are Expected Before General Availability – 02-Jul-14
.London says that they are expecting 50,000 applications until one month from now when .london will enter the launch phase. Those who have applied through the ICANN trademark clearing house will also be given priority. The launch period will close…
WSJ.com Covers New gTLD Domain Extensions Highlighting .global: “We Spent $10m” – 02-Jul-14
WSJ.com Live Covered the new gTLD domain name program today on WSJ Live and the star of the 3 minute segment was .Global The segment was entitled Bye ‘Dot Com,’ 1300 New Domains Blowing You Away. “You know ‘dot com’ and ‘dot org’ but over the next few years you could be…
Inside the hidden world of offline auctions for online property – 01-Jul-14
At least 100 men and women—mostly men—filed into the ballroom at the Hilton in London Paddington on Tuesday, June 25. They were there to get an early chance at buying brand new web properties: addresses ending in .global, which is just one of hundreds of new top-level domains (the last part of a web address, like .com) being created this year. Of the 82 on offer, 35 domain names found a home, selling for a total of $63,780.
Warning: Expired Domains are Easy Pickings for Hackers – 01-Jul-14
GroovyPost.com did a piece written by Jack Busch about his experience with an expired domain and hackers. From the article: I learned a hard lesson this week. Long story short, a spammer from Vietnam has hijacked my Google Apps for Domains (now called Google Apps for Business) account and is currently sending people emails from…
New Tool: How to Invest in Chinese Domains Without Knowing a Word of Chinese: ChineseLandrush.com – 01-Jul-14
TLD Registry Ltd the registry for Dot Chinese Online (.在线) and Dot Chinese Website (.中�-��’) has released a new tool to help domain investors who do not speak Chinese (guys like me) to find available domains in Chinese. The New tool is ChineseLandrush.com . “ChineseLandrush.com is an innovative new way to help non-Chinese speakers to…
Msc.com Purchased at Sedo Auction for $48k in December Saved in UDRP – 01-Jul-14
MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company Holding S.A. of Geneva, Switzerland, just lost its attempt to grab the domain name MSC.com Its an interesting case because the domain name was acquired by the domain holder Paul Kocher, in a Sedo auction for $48,000 in December 2013 Actually Jeremiah Johnston of Sedo represented the domain holder. After the…
North Carolina Company Guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking – 01-Jul-14
Company claims rights dating to 2010 and domain name was registered in 2002. But… Personal Communication Systems, Inc of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking. The company filed a UDRP against the owner of HealthWave.com. Healthwave is the name of an automated medical appointment reminder system that Personal Communication…
Personal Communication Systems, Inc Gulity of RDNH On Healthwave.com – 01-Jul-14
Personal Communication Systems, Inc. of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, represented by Bell, Davis & Pitt, P.A. was just found guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) on the domain name healthwave.com. The Complainant registered a trademark on the term HEALTHWAVE in October 2012. The domain holder registered the domain in 2002 The one member panel of…
Ex-verisign VP Dave Stewart Name PIR VP of Sales and Marketing for .org/.ngo/.ong – 01-Jul-14
Public Interest Registry (PIR), the not-for-profit operator of the .org, named former Verisign VP, Dave Stewart As Vice President Of Sales And Marketing Industry for .org and .ngo, .ong Most recently, Mr. Stewart served as vice president for strategic partnerships at Verisign where he was responsible for account management, channel marketing and business development. During…
Microsoft Seizes 22 Domains of No-ip Based Off of Subdomain USAge & Millions of Uses Effected – 01-Jul-14
No-IP a DNS service company told its customers on its company blog yesterday, that Microsoft has gotten a federal court order seizing 22 of its domain names based on the activity of users on some of the subdomains. According to arstechnica.com, “Millions of legitimate servers that rely on dynamic domain name services from No-IP.com suffered…
.London Predicts 50,000 Landrush Names – 01-Jul-14
Two months into its combined sunrise/landrush period Dot London Domains estimates it will end July with 50,000 applied-for names. A “projection based on current applications”, the number doesn’t say a heck of a lot about how many names have actually been applied for since the TLD opened for applications on April 29. It could mean…
Go Daddy Launches Mobile Payment System “Get Paid” – 30-Jun-14
Go Daddy launched Get Paid today a new mobile payment service that partners with Paypal, Stripe and Dwolla. Tech Crunch covered the launch. These types of products are the ever continuing push to focus on small business and become a player in areas where Go Daddy did not compete prior to Blake Irving becoming CEO…
The Price of .bar Was $100,000 to a School – 30-Jun-14
Wondering how the new gTLD registry Punto 2012 managed to get government approval for .bar, even though it’s a protected geographic term in Montenegro under ICANN rules? At least part of the deal seems to involve a 10-year, $100,000 commitment to fund a school in the tiny Montenegrin city of Bar, judging by a press…
Igloo to Market 300k+ Domainsponsor Domain Names – 30-Jun-14
Domain name portfolio acquired by Rook Media will be marketed by Igloo. When Rook Media acquired DomainSponsor earlier this year, it also acquired Oversee.net’s large portfolio of domain names. Domain brokerage Igloo will begin marketing many of these domain names shortly, Igloo and Rook announced today. While not all domain names will be offered for…
Spy On Recently Backordered Domain Names With New Service – 30-Jun-14
SnoopNames monitors last-minute domain name backorders. A new service called SnoopNames claims to enable you to spy on other peoples’ backorders in order to backorder potentially valuable domain names. The site monitors various expired domain sites to spot initial backorders placed on domains in the last 24 hours before the cut off. The idea is…
.London Ads Spotted in London Last Week – 30-Jun-14
Here are some ads for the .London domain name spotted in London during the ICANN conference. I spent last week in London at the ICANN meeting. This was interesting timing because the city is gearing up for the launch of .London, which should prove to be a strong new TLD. The open nature of the…
About Those .io Domain Names… – 30-Jun-14
Few tech startups understand the origins of their clever domain names. David Meyer of Gigaom published a story this morning titled “The dark side of .io: How the U.K. is making web domain profits from a shady Cold War land deal.” The story explains the country code top level domain name nature of .io and…
Bieber Plug Has No Impact On .tattoo Sales – 30-Jun-14
Justin Bieber used his extensive social media channels to plug a .tattoo domain name to his bazillions of “beliebers” last week, but so far the plug has had no impact on sales of the gTLD. The pop singer, beloved of 11-year-old girls worldwide, tweeted and Facebooked about the domain joker.tattoo, which leads visitors to his…
Unanimous Support for New ICANN Appeals Process – 30-Jun-14
The Generic Names Supporting Organization has issued an “unprecedented” statement of “unanimous” support for a new way for ICANN community members to appeal ICANN decisions. All seven constituency groups signed onto a statement that was read by representatives of registries, non-commercial users and intellectual property interests at the ICANN 50 public forum last week. “It…
One Tiny Country Gets Some Exposure From One Large Movie Franchise – 29-Jun-14
The Pitcairn Islands are a group of four volcanic islands in the southern Pacific Ocean. The population is 56, yes 56. It is safe to say that most have no idea that the Pitcairn Islands have their own country code, and even fewer would know what two letters represent this tiny nation. The country code…
Domainers Choice Award Winners – 28-Jun-14
The Domainers Choice Awards announced their winners on Saturday at DBR Fun Fest, Kevin McKim from NameInnovations live tweeted the winners. TheDomains.com was nominated for best publication, we congratulate Ron Jackson for winning that award, Ron has always been number one in my book so I am very glad to see him win the award…
Verisign Downgraded By Wells Fargo: Growth is Slowing Due to New gTLD’s & Could Get Worse – 27-Jun-14
TheStreet.com is reporting that Wells Fargo analyst Gray Powell downgraded Verisign (VRSN) today writing: VeriSign’s domain name growth appears to be falling a bit lower than the midpoint of second quarter expectations and competition from new gTLDs could be influencing overall growth to some degree. “The company is tracking toward about 400K domain name additions…
Say Hello to The 1st 158 .nyc Domains: Happybirthday.nyc, Honeymoon.nyc Startrek.nyc – 27-Jun-14
The Sunrise period for trademark/brand holders closed on June 20 for the .NYC new gTLD, the extension for the city of New York. The latest zone files indicate that brands and trademark holders participated very lightly in the Sunrise period, where I count less than 160 domain name registrations (of course all of the Sunrise…
.archi – First New gTLD Using Ksregistry Solution is Live (.bio and .desi Will Follow) – 27-Jun-14
.ARCHI started in the General Availability on June 16 and is the first new TLD using the registry system of the KSregistry GmbH as technical framework. Startingdot’s .ARCHI is the new top level domain exclusively reserved for the community of…
Israeli and U.S. terror victims move to seize Iran’s domain names – 26-Jun-14
Court papers served to the organization administrating the World Wide Web, would have the plaintiffs control the domains of Iranian, Syrian and North Korean websites.
France Slams ICANN After GAC Rejects Special Treatment for .wine – 26-Jun-14
France says that “ICANN is no longer the appropriate forum to discuss Internet governance” after it failed to win support from other governments for special protections in .wine and .vin gTLDs. The government came to ICANN 50 in London this week apparently determined to secure a Governmental Advisory Committee consensus that .wine should have protection…
GAC Rejects Multistakeholderism, Tells ICANN to Ignore The GNSO – 26-Jun-14
The Governmental Advisory Committee has advised ICANN to do as it’s told and stop listening to the views of other stakeholders, on the issue of protection mechanisms for the Red Cross. In a barely believable piece of formal advice to the ICANN board this morning, part of its London communique (pdf), the GAC said: the…
As ICANN Meeting Ends “China Launches Campaign to Control The Internet” – 26-Jun-14
Talk about a disturbing headline Chinatopix.com just published a post entitled “China Launches Campaign To Control The Internet” According to the story, China’s communist government intends to impose on the Internet the same “guiding principles” it currently uses to stifle online dissent within China.” The decision of the U.S. to relinquish its oversight of ICANN,…
IPOfinancial: “No Way GoDaddy’s Ipo Can Move Forward As is With Google Entering The Market” – 26-Jun-14
I chatted with David Menlow, who is the founder IPOfinancial.com yesterday about Godaddy’s planned IPO and Google’s announcement this week that they were entering the domain name registrar business “I don’t see how GoDaddy’s IPO could “move forward.” “If it does, the valuations of this deal has to be radically” “Whatever valuation models were being…
Radix Launches .website, .press and .host With 50+ Registrars Onboard – 26-Jun-14
Radix, the largest new gTLD applicant from Asia, announced the launch of .website, .press and .host with over 50 registrars on board including GoDaddy, Tucows, 1and1 and others. Sunrise for .website, .press and .host is running concurrently and will end…
Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) Communiqué From ICANN 50 in London – 26-Jun-14
The Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) met in London, United Kingdom during the week of 21 of June 2014. Sixty one (61) GAC Members attended the meetings and eight (8) Observers. The GAC expresses warm thanks to the local host for their support. High Level Governmental Meeting The GAC expressed its sincere appreciation to the United Kingdom for hosting the High Level Governmental Meeting on 23 June 2014. The meeting provided a valuable forum for Ministers and senior officials to emphasise to ICANN a range of important public policy concerns…
Survey Finds 76% of Australians Prefer .au Domain Names – 26-Jun-14
A survey of more than 3,000 Australians has found .au domain name registrations are on the rise, with 76% of all domain name holders choosing .au, an increase of 2% on last year. The survey is the second annual report…