Category: Domain names

The acquisition of Rightside Group by Donuts becomes a reality

new gTLDs - The acquisition of Rightside Group by Donuts

It’s at mid-July that ICANN has given its consent regarding the merge of Rightside Group, the registry behind the 40 new gTLDs (.ATTORNEY, .NINJA, .PUB, .DENTIST, .NEWS, .ROCKS, .LIVE, etc.) and the other well-known registry in the new gTLDs’ world, Donuts Inc (more than 200 TLDs: .LIFE, .LOANS, .MEDIA, .SOLUTIONS, .WORLD, etc.).

Donuts will then acquire Rightside at the price of 10.60$ per action, in the context of a takeover offer, i.e. an operation of approximatively 213 million in total.

Donuts, already largely dominant with its hundred extensions, continues to reinforce its position and benefits from difficulties faced by some registries suffering from deficit of commercial success.

This new operation highlights a fact: many new extensions didn’t obtain the expected enthusiasm and the registries which created them are in difficulties.

Are we heading slowly but surely towards a retrieval by Donuts of unsuccessful registries seeking to limit the losses?

 

Black July for the .xyz

.XYZ - new gTLD

The volume leader of the new gTLDs has seen its zone file cut by more than half.

While it started its July month with more than 5.2 million of registered domain names in its zone, it had only 2.5 million on Monday 17, letting the .top get its way back to the top in the meantime.

How to explain such a phenomenon?

First of all, the multigenerational extension doesn’t escape the non-renewal law.

A year after having massively registered at the derisory price of 0.01$ or even received for free their domain names in .xyz, the acquirers simply don’t renew these latter, hence a considerably reduced zone file.

Last but not least, a big part of the non-renewals comes from the ban done to registries by the China Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to sell .xyz.

Yet, half of the registered domain names in .xyz were owned by people in China.

The case is currently in the process of being resolved, so the .xyz has yet to type its final point.

Nameshield: The first French registrar certified ISO 27001 on all its registrar activity

Nameshield's ISO 27001 certification

 

 

Nameshield is proud to announce its ISO 27001 certification on all its registrar activity, the product of many months of work.

Why the ISO 27001 certification?

Since its creation, 23 years ago, Nameshield has taken to heart to provide to its customers the best services under conditions of optimal security. By choosing the ISO 27001 standard, this constant care given to all our services is now certified by a competent authority.

The impressive rise of the occurrence and the force of the cybercriminal attacks has comforted the founder and CEO of Nameshield, Jean-Paul Béchu, in his determination to propose to all our users an ISO 27001 certification on all our registrar activity.

Today, it’s frequent that cybercriminals attack services providers in order to reach indirectly their final targets. And if our Security Officer of Information System monitored already the security of our infrastructure, the ISO 27001 reinforces the requirements.

If Nameshield has engaged in this process, the result of an important investment, human and financial, it’s because it’s essential for us to demonstrate and certify the dimension of our engagement in term of security.

To be certified ISO 27001 is to ensure our customers and partners that the security of the Information systems is completely integrated and that Nameshield is committed to a process of constant improvement requiring specific resources, which we have chosen to deploy.

The certification confirms the competence of Nameshield’s employees and their expertise in the protection of critical information.

 

What is the ISO 27001 certification?

ISO 27001 is an international standard which describes the requirements for the establishment of an Information security Management System. This one is intended to choose the security measures to set up in order to ensure the protection of sensitive goods of a company on a defined perimeter. In the case of Nameshield, it covers all of its registrar activity.

At a higher level, the ISO 27001 standard requires that the managers of the company are involved in the cyber defense. In parallel, a steering committee follows the implementation of the new arrangements respecting the standard.

An audit carried out by LRQA, the World Leader of the certification of value added Management systems, allows us to deploy our security measures and to become the first French registration office to be certified on the complete perimeter of its registrar activity.

Nameshield, your trusted partner.

 

.BRAND : 4 episodes, for this summer

.BRAND : 4 episodes, for this summer
Photo : CC BY-SA 3.0 Nick Youngson – source : http://nyphotographic.com/

Act 1: Denial (and Anger)

 

The brand, a forbidden territory. Everything is played out by attacks, complaints, courts. A ruthless world. Since the 23rd of June 1857 and the creation of the first system of trademarks by France, it is possible to benefit from an exclusive right of use for a term on different applications. Otherwise the law is coming. The arrival of the Internet will shake up this foundation.

If one remembers the Milka conflict with Kraft foods, which led to the famous opposition between Milka Budimir, a seamstress in Bourg-lès-Valence, and the American giant Kraft Foods about the domain name milka.fr, we can keep in mind the case of many domain names holders who succeeded in winning attacks against those bigger than them.

The expression of David vs Goliath is illustrated in France with leclerc.fr, domain name registered by a fan of the Leclerc tank. In spite of an attempt at recovery of SYRELI type, the tradesmen never succeeded in obtaining this famous domain name. For posterity, the justification of the individual will be retained in his argument: “… in life there are not only shopping centers and consumption, France is above all, a country of history, a strong history of which we can be proud!”

 

.BRAND - Leclerc.fr website
Leclerc.fr website

 

In the United States, the case of Nissan Computers is interesting. The little known IT company was registered after the name of its owner, Uzi Nissan. The eponymous Japanese company Nissan Motors evidently pouted at the deposit of nissan.com and tried to recover the domain name in question. Despite an incessant media campaign and numerous attacks, today nissan.com remains the property of Nissan Computers. Nissan Motors now uses nissanusa.com for its US business. In this case, the Nissan.com website only reflects Nissan Computers’ computer sales activity. We can instead find a strong attack against Nissan Motors. A bad buzz in action!

 

.BRAND - nissan.com website
Nissan.com website

 

What can we keep in mind through these two experiences? A relatively interesting bone marrow: the domain name, this intangible asset representing the image of a company, has not been sufficiently monitored by multinationals.

New extensions: The first signs of a (R)evolution?

Domain names registration strategies follow reasoning sometimes hard to understand. However “sheep-like” reasoning is the one we can easily observe.

When Alphabet (Google) used for the first time its domain name ABC.XYZ, a sensitive rise of registrations for this extension has been observed. More than a simple registration, ABC.XYZ has created for the public, informed or not, an interrogation on the extension used: “they aren’t in .COM?”

 

New extension - abc.xyz Alphabet Google

 

New gTLDs’s program by ICANN has generated many thoughts on naming politic on the web. Until now, these extensions weren’t well known by the general public, despite the real concern of the brands to communicate on this subject: BNP Paribas, Leclerc and AXA for French examples, which have chosen a dedicated extension.

New gTLDs creation allows to register domain name by searching to give a meaning to the associated activity: be it geographical or by sector.

That way, the following sentence makes more sense: “When I look at the domain name, I know what’s behind it”.

Today, despite this opportunity, few companies of big scale have chosen to use a new extension. And none to my knowledge, suppress its former address to go on the new one. Which can be quite logical. But things which seem unchanging, are changing.

DXC an American company, present in NYSE, has changed its short domain name, three characters, dxc.com to dxc.technology. It was our colleagues of DNW who announced this news. However the email addresses service didn’t move to the new extension yet.

 

New extension - dxc.technology
Example of dxc.technology

 

This information may seem of little importance, but have in mind the impact it will have on the process of new extensions use. Simply put, it begins with the importance and the safety of the extension for a company to change. Wait for the next step! It may only be the beginning of an underlying trend on communication and naming strategy on Internet.

Technology revolution growth is usually slower than the one planned, but its impact is often more important… To be continued.