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Montefiore Investment acquires domain name registrar Gandi

by — Domain Registrars 1 Comment

Private equity firm acquires domain name registrar with 2.5 million domains.

Gandi.net logo

Private equity firm Montefiore Investment has acquired domain name registrar Gandi.

In a heartfelt blog post, Gandi CEO Stephan Ramoin explained the origins of the company and its values. One thing that’s unique about Gandi is that is has grown mostly by word-of-mouth; the company didn’t jump into the advertising game like many registrars.

With a private equity backer, Ramoin noted that the company will now look to acquire other businesses for the first time.

Gandi has revenues of over 37 million euros and 800,000 customers. More than half of its sales come from France, where it is located, but other regions have contributed substantially since the company created overseas subsidiaries in 2012. Gandi has more than 2.5 million domains under management.

Bad guys get Gandi.net’s password to technical provider, redirect domains

by — Domain Registrars 2 Comments

751 domain names registered at Gandi were pointed to malware sites.

Hackers managed to redirect 751 domain names at domain name registrar Gandi.net to servers spreading malware, the company detailed this week.

All of the domain names were on country code domain names for which Gandi uses a third-party technical provider to connect to the registry. Gandi, like most registrars, has direct connections to many of the registries. But for some ccTLDs, it uses a third party to provide the connection. That’s where the breach occurred.

According to Gandi, someone was able to get its credentials to log in to the web interface of the unnamed technical provider to redirect the names. Gandi believes that the credentials were intercepted because the technical provider allows access via http instead of https.

The domain names were redirected for up to 11 hours.

Although I understand the desire to not throw the technical provider under the bus, revealing its name could help other registrars prevent the same thing from happening. (Psst: if you know who the provider is that handles 34 of Gandi’s ccTLDs, drop me a line.)

Study Questions if Consumers Want New Top Level Domains

by — Domain Registrars 9 Comments

Research report shows consumers not keen on new TLDs.

A couple weeks ago I received an email from a researcher at The Future Laboratory, a UK-based research and trend forecasting company. The company was preparing a report, sponsored by domain registrar Gandi.net, about the introduction of new top level domain names. We later discussed the issues surrounding new TLDs via phone.

I assumed that the report would be tainted by Gandi’s position on new top level domains, but I was assured the company was only the sponsor. Aside from some sidebars from Gandi, the report seems to be straightforward and unbiased.

One of the findings in the report is that consumers mostly haven’t heard of these new domains, and most don’t care to see them:

They believe existing domain name extensions are trustworthy and reassuring, whereas the prospect of new website suffixes provokes suspicion and concern. For example, 35% of consumers think
.uk is trustworthy, compared to 3% that trust .biz (which was created in 2001) and 4% that trust
.eco (a proposed new TLD)…

The majority of consumers polled (60%) agree that the liberalisation of domain name extensions will
change the way they use the Internet, but not for the better. The Internet will become full of pointless
domain names (for 65% of those polled), messy and confusing (57%), too complex to navigate (46%) and
out of control (41%)…

Consumers muster little enthusiasm for any new top-level domains. A quarter of people are ambivalent about the prospect of a .theirname suffix and 28% would be wary of domains ending with .theirprofession. Just 15% think this sort of suffix would be appealing.

The report also gave examples of new ways to use domains, such as london.lonelyplanet. I keep seeing examples like this, and wonder what’s wrong with london.lonelyplanet.com. Indeed, many people will type the domain that way anyway. The report includes a similar assessment by an ecommerce consultant:

Everyone knows that Amazon is amazon.com or amazon.co.uk,’ says ecommerce consultant, Emma Kane. But if Amazon ever decides to operate under .books, she says ‘it will just lead to confusion, especially amongst less savvy internet users who will type in Amazon.books.com as opposed to Amazon.books.

The Future Laboratory surveyed 1,000 British consumers for the report. Although one could cite the sample size or locality of the consumers as different from the world at large, this is the only study I know of that shows any hard stats about consumer interest in new TLDs.

Over the next few months you will surely see more studies about consumer interest in new TLDs. Always consider the source, as many are backed by companies looking to make a buck off of new domains.