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January’s top domain name news stories

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Looking back at last month in domains.

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There was a lot of news in the domain name industry last month. Here’s a look at the top five posts on Domain Name Wire ranked by the number of pageviews.

1. This company’s domain name is a ten digit domain! – Using your telephone number as a domain name seems a little backward, doesn’t it?

2. .Com prices are going up after Verisign pays off ICANN – The optics are bad after ICANN accepts $20 million payment as part of a deal to raise .com prices.

3. Google’s new search results pages: love it or hate it? – A lot of people hate it, so Google is testing pages without favicons.

4. California Attorney General delays .org sale – The attorney general has opened an investigation into the sale and ICANN, but Public Interest Registry is pushing back on the delay.

5. XYZ to launch five top level domains this year – XYZ is on a .quest to provide more .beauty.

Here are the DNW podcasts published in January:

Podcasts:

#267 – The domain sales lander OG (listen)

#268 – Interview with Saw.com cofounders (listen)

#269 – From selling vinyl to selling domain names (listen)

#270 – A NamesCon preview with Michael Cyger and Monte Cahn (listen)

 

L’Oreal sells four top level domains to XYZ

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Cosmetics company gets out of generic domain business.

Picture of woman applying eye shadow

.Makeup among domains XYZ has acquired.

Top level domain registry XYZ has acquired four domain names from L’Oreal, according to ICANN records.

The company acquired .beauty, .makeup, .hair and .skin on January 10, 2020.

L’Oreal no longer has any non-brand top level domain names in its stable. It seemed like an uninterested registrant of these top level domains to begin with; it had plans to operate at least some of them as “closed” top level domains that weren’t open to registration. Then it offered some of the domains at very high prices.

Last week, XYZ announced plans to launch five new top level domain names this year but only named .quest.

XYZ to launch five top level domains this year

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.Quest is next up on the company’s launch schedule.

Image showing XYZ's top level domains

And five more coming soon

The rollout of new top level domains has slowed to a trickle these days, but one company continues to bring the domains to market.

New top level domain name company XYZ says it has acquired five top level domain names that it plans to launch in 2020.

One of them is .quest, a dot-brand domain name that it acquired last year from Hong Kong company QNet.

XYZ pitches the domain name like this:

Knowledgeable businesses, organizations, and individuals can use .Quest to mark their website as the leading destination for their audience. It will allow the domain owner to effectively show their customers that they will guide them to the end of their search.

The company did not reveal the other four top level domains it has acquired, but the company has a history of acquiring domains from companies that registered them as dot-brands and then repurposing them as generic domains. For example, last year it launched .monster after acquiring it from job site Monster.com. (If I weren’t busy at NamesCon today, I might search ICANN’s website for the other domains. Readers are welcome to help. Or Kevin Murphy might have spotted them.)

I suspect .quest will be on the lower end of the price scale. XYZ offers some domain names for dirt cheap, such as .xyz, and others for thousands of dollars per year, such as .car.

 

 

New TLDs, five years in

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It was five years ago this month that the first domains under the new top level domain (nTLD) program started rolling out to consumers. The first Latin script general availability domains came out in early February 2014.

Remember .guru? .Plumbing? Yeah, that was a long time ago.

Here’s how I’d sum up the first five years of new top level domains.

Demand and artificial demand

Registration numbers for new TLDs have not met expectations for just about anyone who put money into it. That includes the many registries that spent millions acquiring strings as well as ICANN.

I thought new TLD applicants were very bullish, but even I was surprised when the first sunrises got only a couple hundred registrations.

Applicants should have understood the market size better. People were looking at registrations in .com and predicting market size for new TLD strings but many applicants expected some magic demand to come out of nowhere. The reality is that there are only so many people creating a website at a given time. They’re going to look for a .com or ccTLD name. If they don’t get that then they might consider a new TLD. So new TLD demand for people creating websites is a subset of total site creator demand. Without a catalyst for more people to create websites, demand won’t shoot up. Click here to continue reading…

XYZ files three trademark applications

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New TLD company files for three trademarks on existing TLDs; readies two more namespaces.

Logo for .Monster top level domain name

XYZ.com is launching .Monster in sunrise this month.

New top level domain name company XYZ.com LLC filed three trademark applications last week that match the slogans it uses to market three top level domain names.

The applications are for:

  • Express your passion  (.theatre)
  • Advancing online security  (.security)
  • Claim your space  (.storage)

XYZ.com has 10 registered trademarks.

The company is getting ready to launch/relaunch two top level domain names this year: .Monster and .Baby. It acquired .Monster from jobs company Monster Worldwide and will launch it in sunrise this month. It acquired .baby from Johnson & Johnson.

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