As I noted over the weekend, ICANN has instigated legal action against Epag, an ICANN accredited registrar based in Germany that is part of the Tucows group. ICANN claims that the case is to “preserve WHOIS data”, but Tucows asserts in their statement that the ICANN approach is flawed. It’s not a frivolous statement, but… Continue reading ICANN vs EPAG / Tucows: Tucows Releases Statement on What They’re Doing and Why
Category: registrars
ICANN Sues German Registrar Over GDPR
ICANN announced Friday that it is pursuing legal action in Germany against Epag. Epag is owned by Tucows, who are one of the largest registrars in the world. So what is going on? Why is ICANN taking legal action against a registrar? According to the announcement from ICANN the action is “to preserve whois data”.… Continue reading ICANN Sues German Registrar Over GDPR
RegistrarStats Going Dark
RegistrarStats has been around for years. It was one of the better sources of information about domain registry market share, trends and, of course, statistics on registrars. It was. It hasn’t been for quite some time. When the site was first made available most, if not all, of the data was available for free. If… Continue reading RegistrarStats Going Dark
UK2 Group Acquired by The Hut Group
The M & A activity in the hosting and domain markets continues. Earlier today it was announced that The Hut Group has acquired UK2. The Hut Group isn’t in the hosting or domain name space directly, but as a global e-commerce company would be a big consumer of infrastructure to support its brands, which include… Continue reading UK2 Group Acquired by The Hut Group
DomainMonster Is No More. All Customers Being Migrated to 123-Reg
Mergers and acquisitions in the hosting and domain name business have become increasingly common over the last couple of years. As a result things have got a tad confusing and some well known brands have either ceased to exist entirely or are in flux. Case in point is Domain Monster. The company was acquired by… Continue reading DomainMonster Is No More. All Customers Being Migrated to 123-Reg
United Internet Acquires Strato
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Oracle To Acquire Dyn
Oracle is acquiring DNS and internet performance provider Dyn. The announcement was made earlier today. Financial details of the transaction have not been disclosed. It’ll probably take several months for the deal to close and for now nothing will change for any of DYN’s clients. Here’s the press release: Oracle today announced that it has… Continue reading Oracle To Acquire Dyn
Which TLDs Brands Are Registering
MarkMonitor has released a graphic illustrating which new top level domains brands are registering domain names in. For those unfamiliar with them, MarkMonitor is a “corporate” registrar, so their core business is handling domain registrations for brands and trademark holders. According to MarkMonitor’s data the top 20 extensions are: .sucks .porn .adult .news .online .reviews… Continue reading Which TLDs Brands Are Registering
ASOP To Recognise Contribution From Internet Industry
ASOP (Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies) is often seen as taking a rather confrontational stance towards domain registrars, registries and hosting providers. However both ASOP and others, including LegitScript, often cite the assistance they’ve received from internet industry players in their work. This year ASOP has decided to take this a step further by creating… Continue reading ASOP To Recognise Contribution From Internet Industry
Facebook Has Acquired A Registrar
Facebook has acquired an ICANN accredited registrar. According to a tweet from Pinky Brand (below) the news came via an update from ICANN to registry operators Weekly email report from #ICANN indicates that #FaceBook has acquired a registrar https://t.co/nF6qqUgri2 — Pinky Brand (@pinkybrand) April 14, 2016 On the GNSO Council call this evening Susan Kawaguchi… Continue reading Facebook Has Acquired A Registrar