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Groups tell U.S. Gov what its internet priorities should be

by — Policy & Law 0 Comments

Companies weigh in on IANA transition, Whois access and more.

Last month, the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) asked stakeholders to comment on the government’s internet policy priorities for 2018 and beyond.

The NTIA has now published the responses.

87 companies, organizations and individuals submitted responses.

Most of the comments are not surprising. For example, groups including GoDaddy (pdf), Google (pdf) and even CIRA (pdf) (in Canada) expressed support for the NTIA removing its role in the IANA functions two years ago.

Internet Commerce Association (pdf) weighed in with concerns about the NTIA’s Cooperative Agreement with Verisign and what this could mean for .com pricing.

Lots of copyright and trademark groups lobbied the government to push for access to Whois records in light of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Oh, and Planet.ECO still wants .eco (pdf).

You can view all of the submissions here.

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Google sues more “Google Listings” telemarketers

by — Policy & Law 1 Comment

Google files lawsuits against companies that it claims mislead businesses about their Google listings.

If your phone number is associated with a business, there’s a great chance you’ve been on the receiving end of telemarketing calls or robocalls like this. The caller usually claims to be affiliated with Google or Google itself.

Google has fought back against some of these companies in the past, and it is turning to the courts again in an effort to take stop several other companies it alleges are misleading consumers.

The search giant filed one lawsuit in California and two lawsuits in Florida.

The California suit is against Kydia, Inc., d/b/a BeyondMenu. Google alleges (pdf) that the company is misleading restaurant owners in an effort to get access to their Google listing and link to BeyondMenu’s restaurant ordering service rather than directly to the restaurant’s site.

The Florida lawsuits (pdf, pdf) name the following companies:

Supreme Marketing Group d/b/a Small Business Solution and d/b/a Claim My Biz
Pointbreak Media LLC, d/b/a Point Break Solutions and Kivanni Marketing
Modern Source Media, LLC
Modern Spotlight Group, LLC
Modern Spotlight, LLC
Perfect Image Online

Looking back at the case filed against Local Lighthouse in 2015, it appears that Local Lighthouse admitted its actions and agreed to not do it anymore…but I don’t see any financial penalty in the judgment (pdf). Unless Google brings down the hammer on companies that do this, they will continue to proliferate.

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Over 100,000 .App domains already registered

by — Uncategorized 20 Comments

Google’s .App domain name pops in first day of general availability.

Over 100,000 .app domain names have been registered after less than a day in general availability.

Google Tech Lead Ben McIlwain disclosed the number during a talk at Google I/O this afternoon.

30,000 domain names, ostensibly pre-registrations, were registered within the first three minutes of general availability.

17,000 domain names were registered during the early access period over the past week.

These are stunning numbers for a new top level domain name and could give all new top level domain names some much-needed exposure.

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.App continues to soar, sets records at GoDaddy

by — Domain Registrars 17 Comments

Domain is headed for biggest new TLD launch yet.

I might sound like a broken record here, but .app continues to outperform essentially all new top level domain name launches to date.

Although it’s not reflected in the zone file, Google’s Ben McIlwain reports that over 7,500 domain names were registered during day five of the early access phase.

That puts all other new TLDs to shame.

I continue to get cancellation notices on pre-orders I placed since the domains are no longer available.

This morning, GoDaddy VP Paul Nicks confirmed to DNW that .App is its biggest new top level domain launch to date in terms of pre-orders at the registrar. Every day of early access has beaten the same day of other new TLD early access periods, and it has more pre-orders than any other domain.

Prior to .App, .Guru was the largest (it was first) and .VIP was second in terms of volume at GoDAddy.

Given these results, you might want to adjust your strategy if you have a pre-order domain. Remember, if more than one person has pre-ordered a domain at GoDaddy then you’ll wind up in an auction. It might be worth paying the day 7 EAP price today rather than risk an auction.

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Namecheap jumps up .Com leaderboard

by — Domain Registrars 2 Comments

Namecheap gets boost from bulk transfer from Tucows.

ICANN has published the latest official .com data from January.

January is typically an up month for domain name registrations as the year kicks off, and you’ll see that in the data.

Namecheap lept up the top registrar chart to #6 thanks to a massive bulk transfer of domains from Tucows.

In January, these were the top 10 registrars in terms of new .com registrations: Click here to continue reading…

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