Peter Dengate Thrush and Antony Van Couvering discuss future of TLDH.

Yesterday former ICANN Chairman Peter Dengate Thrush announced he was joining Top Level Domain Holdings (parent company of Minds + Machines) as Executive Chairman.

I just got off the phone with Dengate Thrush, who explained why he chose Top Level Domain Holdings.

“It was a no brainer for me,” said Dengate Thrush about choosing to work with TLDH. He thinks TLDH is most equipped to face the next phase of the new top level domain name process.

TLDH has multiple business models which make it an attractive business, he said. They plan to apply for new TLDs themselves as well as be a service provider for applicants. This generates multiple revenue sources. He also likes that TLDH is a public company, which means people who can’t otherwise invest in new TLDs can invest in the upside through its stock.

Dengate Thrush said he’s not sure why there’s criticism of him joining a new TLD company shortly after leaving the board and voting to approve the new TLD program.

“There are no provisions that stop it, so I’m not sure why people would be raising it [as an issue],” he said. He points out that ICANN’s board doesn’t receive compensation and there are existing board members already working for companies that may profit from new TLDs.

He said the process for new TLDs has been completely transparent. “It’s not like I left ICANN with any sort of insider knowledge of the guidebook,” he said.

His predecessor, Vinton Cerf, took a paid position on VeriSign’s advisory board after stepping down.

Minds + Machines CEO Antony Van Couvering is no doubt excited to have Dengate Thrush on board.

“He’s modest about his achievements but they’re very stellar,” said Van Couvering. “It’s been great here in London talking to investors and analysts having him here.”

When I asked Van Couvering how long he’s been trying to snag Dengate Thrush, he said “about ten years”.

But of course he didn’t start discussions until after Dengate Thrush stepped down from his role as Chairman at ICANN.

Although auction was boring, sales results are positive.

Many people called Moniker’s Barcelona domain name auction a failure.

It’s easy to see why. After all, the auction didn’t end up taking place in Barcelona thanks to technical problems. Then when the auction took place online, only 5 domains sold.

But for Oversee.net, this was anything but a failure.

As I pointed out a month ago, the total sales from this auction could be Moniker’s best auction since its $10M+ blockbuster in 2007.

Oversee.net now says total sales from the auction have topped $7.2 million.

You don’t need to be a mathematician to figure out approximately how much data.com sold for. Subtract the $2.6 million Social.com sale and you’re down to $4.6 million. The five domains sold in the online auction tallied less than $60,000. So unless there are other big sales we don’t know about, that pegs Data.com at somewhere in the $4.5 million neighborhood.

The company expects final sales to top $9 million, which means some other big ones are in the works.

How many .xxx domain names will be registered in the first year?

ICM Registry says it has received nearly 900,000 “expressions of interest” for its .xxx top level domain name. It has also extended the sunrise period for trademark holders, apparently due to demand.

Anyone could submit an expression of interest in a .xxx domain name and some of them are for the same domain name, so no one has paid the $70+ per domain for these yet. But that will soon change.

It’s clear there will be a lot of registrations, and not all from willing participants. There are also already over two dozen domain name registrars signed up to accept registrations — most notably GoDaddy.

So, how many domains do you think will be registered by one year after general availability, which would be December 7, 2012?

 Loading ...

Company that says it has rights to the Chris Farley name loses domain name dispute.

A company claiming to own the intellectual property rights to the late comedian Chris Farley’s likeness has bombed in an effort to get the domain name ChrisFarley.com.

Make Him Smile, Inc., claims that Chris Farley’s family granted it intellectual property rights to Chris Farley’s name upon his death. It filed a complaint with Nation Arbitration Forum to get the corresponding domain name.

Although (controversial) panelist Carolyn Marks Johnson found that there’s a common law mark for “Chris Farley”, Make Him Smile, Inc. did not provide evidence that it was the rights holder.

Marks Johnson denied the complaint, but said the complainant can file the case again with better evidence.

I have no doubt that someone is the rightful IP owner to ChrisFarley.com, but I don’t understand why she would offer that the case can be filed again. UDRP cases are fairly straight forward and should be limited to one shot on behalf of the complainant unless new information that couldn’t have been known previously is discovered.

Google gets in on the one letter .co craze.

.Co Internet has found a home for another one letter .co domain name: Google.

The internet giant has purchased rights to g.co, joining an all-star cast of companies picking up one letter .co domains:

Twitter: t.co
Overstock: o.co
Go Daddy: x.co
Amazon.com: A.Co, Z.Co and K.Co

Google plans to use g.co as a URL shortener.

.Co Internet has received a lot of press around the big companies that have registered its one letter domain names. Although eventually they’ll run out of short domains to sell, it’s a smart strategy to get big names on board. And having them use the URL as a shortener means millions of links will populate the web with the .co brand.