Announcements

Monthly Bulletin: July 2017

Posted on by Simran Mehta

We’re back with the second edition of our Industry Round Up. Read on to know more about all the industry updates from the Domains & Hosting space that took place in July.

  • TLD Updates
  • Mergers & Acquisitions
  • ICANN Announcements
  • Net Neutrality

TLD Updates

  • .BLOG hit the 100,000 Milestone this Month: The new gTLD, .BLOG, announced that it has crossed 100,000 registrations since they entered General Availability last November. This has been a great start for .blog, which now averages around 12,500 new adds per month.
  • Most Popular New gTLD in China: .SHOP was awarded as the most popular new gTLD in China at the Global Domain Summit which was held earlier in July. 
  • Non .COM Premium Domains Top the Sales Chart: It’s a rare case when .COM doesn’t rule the premium domain sales chart. July experienced one of those weeks with .ORG ruling the sales chart with Ruppi.com selling BitcoinCash.org for $48,888.
  • .NET Price Hike: On July 28, 2017, Verisign announced a hike in annual prices of a .NET registration, renewal or transfer from $8.20 to $9.02. This hike will be effective from February 1, 2018.
  • .AMAZON TLD Update: The e-commerce giant has been fighting for its brand TLD – .AMAZON, since it was denied approval in 2014 from government advisors. They received a lot of grief from representatives from Brazil and Peru as they argued that the name has geographic connection to the Amazon ecological habitat. However, recently Amazon filed for Independent Review and have been given another shot at acquiring .AMAZON
  • .McDonalds terminates their New gTLDs: McDonald’s recently sent a notice to ICANN terminating their brand TLDs – .McDonalds and .MCD, joining a bunch of recent .brand TLDs who have terminated their contracts with ICANN
  • .COM/.NET update: The .COM & .NET registry released its results for the second quarter of 2017 on July 27th. Verisign reported a revenue of $289 million for the second quarter of 2017. They ended the second quarter with 144.3 million .COM and .NET domain name registrations.

MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

  • SiteLock expands Website Security with Patchman Acquisition: SiteLock, a global leader in providing website security solutions, finalized its acquisition with the Dutch web security startup – Patchman. This deal will help SiteLock magnify its reach and provide better quality support and services to the Hosting provider community. This will also double the number of websites already protected by SiteLock.
  • GoDaddy sells PlusServer for $456M: GoDaddy, the world’s largest Domain Registrar, has signed an agreement to sell their PlusServer business to BC Partners for a value of $465 million. This deal is expected to close by the end of August. GoDaddy is looking at utilizing the funds received from the sale plus cash in hand to repay its €500 million bridge loan.
  • ArcServer acquires Zetta: ArcServer, an XX company, was looking at adding new talent and cloud capabilities to expand their Unified Data Protection portfolio and found Zetta to be the perfect match to meet their business requirements. This acquisition would help advance ArcServer’s Cloud solutions with Zetta’s technology and expertise.
  • United Internet signs an agreement with ProfitBricks: United Internet has an entered in an agreement with the other shareholders of ProfitBricks GmbH – a technologically leading cloud hosting specialist for complete acquisition of the company. United Nations has been a stakeholder in ProfitBricks and this complete takeover will help strengthen their existing product portfolio of Cloud solutions and will enable them to attract clients looking for a professional cloud infrastructure.
  • Rightside-Donuts Update: ICANN has given a go-ahead to Rightside – Donuts merger. As per the agreement, Donuts acquired Rightside for approximately $213M. This deal will add 40 new gTLDs to Donuts’ existing portfolio of 200 gTLDs – the largest in the industry.

ICANN ANNOUNCEMENTS

  • Registry System Testing Site is Now Live: The Registry System Testing (RST) ensures that a Registry Operator has the capacity to operate a new gTLD in a stable and secure manner. Every Registry Operator must ensure that it has established operations as per the criteria mentioned in the Applicant Guidebook. Any changes to back-end operations may require a new RST test to ensure the stability of those services.
  • No Dates for Next gTLD Round: Despite there being a keen interest from Registries, ICANN sent a letter to the Registries Stakeholder Group stating that the agency will not be setting a date for the next round of new gTLD applications anytime soon.
  • ICANN Publishes Updated gTLD Marketplace Health Index: An updated report of the gTLD Marketplace Health Index had been released by ICANN, dated July 6th, 2017. This index takes us through the current statistics and trends related to gTLDs. You can view the entire report here.
  • Candidates for ICANN 60 Fellowship: ICANN announced names of 60 individuals from 50 selected countries to participate in ICANN’s Fellowship Program at the 60th Public Meeting in Abu Dhabi. This program is an initiative by ICANN in order to create a broader and more diverse base of knowledgeable constituents with preference given to candidates living in underserved and underrepresented countries around the globe. You can view the list of selected candidates here.

Save The Internet!

July 12th, 2017 was the day when some of the world’s largest internet companies together participated online to protest against the Federal Communication Commission’s idea of repealing the existing rules of net neutrality.

‘The Internet-Wide Day of Action to Save Net Neutrality’ – as the protest was called, got internet giants like Reddit, Netflix, Amazon, Google, Facebook & more to post banner ads, blog posts and alerts over the internet to show their support. Twitter supported this cause by heavily promoting the #NetNeutrality hashtag.

That’s about it for the month of July. We hope this post has helped you catch up with all the happenings in the industry during this month. Stay tuned for more, next month!

Simran Mehta
Simran Mehta
Simran is the youngest member of our Marketing team, at a whopping 21 years old! When she is not eagerly waiting for the weekend to head out and party, she handles all Social Media and Online Reputation Management for LogicBoxes.