Domain news roundup – September 15, 2023

Welcome to the latest edition of our recurring domain industry news roundup! As summer is almost over, we take stock of what has been happening in the domain industry lately to help you stay updated with the latest news.

New domain sales: Room.com sold for $1.5 million

After a quiet summer season, high-value domain sales are gaining some traction again with the sale of Room.com for a whopping $1.5 million. This amount makes it the second highest-grossing domain sale reported this year, surpassed only by Help.com, which was sold for $3 million in January. Room.com was sold by domain industry pioneer Michael Castello, who already has another valuable domain sale on his resume with the sale of Whisky.com for $3 million in 2014, Go to DNJournal to dive deeper into the latest reported high-value domain sales of September.

Q2 report of the Domain Name Industry Brief was published

The Domain Name Industry Brief (DNIB) is an initiative powered by Verisign that aims to review the state of the domain industry every quarter through statistical and analytical research. The Q2 report was recently published on the DNIB’s website and shows consistent growth across both gTLD and ccTLD registrations. 

With a total of 161.3 million registrations, .com remains the most popular domain extension on the Internet, followed at a considerable distance by ccTLDs .cn (20.3 million registrations) and .de (17.6 million registrations). New gTLDs made up 7.9% of all domain registrations across Q2 of 2023, with .xyz, .online, and .top being the most popular choices.

You can view the full report on the DNIB’s website.

.com domain rankings released for May 2023

In early September, ICANN published the latest official data from Verisign about the total amount of .com registrations. As these reports are always withheld for three months before publication, this data concerns the beginning of May 2023.

1. GoDaddy: 55,863,375.
2. Newfold Digital: 12,733,637.
3. Tucows: 11,211,196.
4. Namecheap: 9,207,956.
5. Google: 6,913,153.
6. TurnCommerce: 6,075,792.
7. IONOS#: 5,506,722.
8. Alibaba: 4,366,133.
9. Gname: 3,866,941.
10. CentralNic: 3,800,61.

CentralNic rebrands as Team Internet Group

CentralNic Group has announced its decision to rebrand to Team Internet Group on September 4, 2023. Team Internet describes the reason behind this name change as the new name “aligning with the Group’s foundational ethos.” Adding to this, they state that “the Group is now built upon distinct pillars – each an authority in its domain – which collectively function as one cohesive ‘Team’. Our shared passion for shaping the future of the ‘Internet’ unifies us.”

Brands under Team Internet’s umbrella include CentralNic Registry, one of the world’s widest-used registry backend solutions, as well as domain registrar CentralNic Reseller (formerly RRPproxy). As of now, these names will remain unchanged.

WordPress launches “100-year” domain registration and hosting plan

A domain name can usually only be registered for a maximum amount of 10 years, but WordPress is smartly circumventing that rule by offering a new, 100-year domain registration and hosting plan to their customers. According to the well-known content management giant, this ensures that “your stories, achievements, and memories are preserved for generations to come”.

Besides a domain name and a web hosting package that will last for a whopping 100 years, the plan also includes unlimited bandwidth and dedicated, personalized support that is available around the clock. The plan retails at a price of $38.000, which equates to $380 per year.

Anguilla is expected to make millions this year off .ai domain registrations

With the .ai boom showing no signs of slowing down, Bloomberg, Fortune, and Ars Technica have all recently published articles about the surge of growth that hit this once-obscure ccTLD after the release of ChatGPT in November last year. The small island state of Anguilla is expected to gain up to $30 million in revenue from .ai domain sales this year, which would account for up to 10% of the country’s GDP. For comparison, the total revenue of .ai sales came up to just $7.4 million back in 2021.

Openprovider attended Dutch Day of the Domain

On September 12, 2023, Openprovider attended Dag van de Domeinnaam, a Dutch industry event all about the domain industry. Through several interesting keynotes by names like SIDN and Realtime Register, visitors were updated on some of the most current topics within the domain industry and gained some interesting new insights. The focus of the day was on security, and we got to discuss together how different players in the industry can work together to keep the Internet a safe place. For Openprovider, it was a great opportunity to learn and catch up with old and new friends!