Before we break for the holiday season, let’s catch up on some of the latest Domains and Hosting-related updates from the month of October.
- Thick Whois for .COM delayed by 6 months: The ICANN board has delayed the enforcement of thick WHOIS for .COM, .NET and .JOBS by six months. This decision was taken due to concerns over the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. The switch for these domains from “Thin WHOIS” to “Thick WHOIS” is due in May 2018. This means that all the whois queries will be taken up by Verisign instead of the registrar.
- Directnic acquires Fabulous.com: Last month, domain name provider Directnic signed a definitive agreement to acquire domain name registrar – Fabulous.com from Dark Blue Sea Pty. The two have been leading domain registrars for the past few years focusing on business customers and domain name investors. However, post this acquisition, the business will continue to operate as separate brands, with Directnic focusing more on business customers and Fabulous.com extending more interest in domain name investors.
- GoDaddy Acquires Name.com Domain Portfolio: GoDaddy acquired an undisclosed number of domain names from Name.com. There’s a mix of .COM domain names as well as nTLDs which are being added to GoDaddy’s portfolio.
- Uniregistry gets a patent for domain management & transfer system: U.S. patent and trademark office granted patent number 9,807,053 to Uniregistry for tracking their domain names and transfers. The main aim of this patent is to monitor domain names owned by customers that are registered at different domain name registrars.
- CentralNic sells $3.4 million of domain names: In the second half of 2016, CentralNic had sold domain names worth EUR 3.5 million to a buyer. In order to keep in line with market expectations as well as its own revenue numbers, the company repeated its performance by selling domain names worth $3.4 million from its domain inventory.
- Hostopia expands its reach in the Australian market: Web services platform provider, Hostopia, has acquired j2 Global’s Australian Web Hosting business, including Web24 and Ausweb to expand its reach in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. This agreement provides Hostopia with a non-exclusive, worldwide license to j2 Global’s digital fax patent portfolio for an exchange of an upfront payment, plus, quarterly royalty payments.
- 365 Data Centers Acquires Host.net: 365 Data Centers acquired Florida-based hybrid data center services provider Host.net and a pair of data centers from Broadband One LLC.This acquisition will empower 365 Data Centers in Florida, New York, Chicago and other parts of United States to expand their business.
Google Launches Google Domains in India!
Google secretly launched Google Domains, a Web domain registrar service in India. The search giant isn’t offering any special promotional offers like most of the Registrars do upon launch. From purchasing to setting up, Google Domains specifies everything in a simplified manner and offers most of the features just like the other Registrars in the market. Google domains are priced significantly higher than similar services operating in India, with a .COM domain priced at Rs 860 per year. Google domains also lets users transfer an existing domain to their service.
Hope we’ve helped you catch up with the latest industry updates from the month of October.. Stay tuned for more updates from our Monthly Bulletin for November!
