Kevin Ohashi - Entrepreneur I Love Learning New Things.

Artificial intelligence had a significant impact on the domain name industry — in more than one way.

Late last year, OpenAI launched ChatGPT. Suddenly, a concept that has been talked about for over a decade had a case study.

It’s hard not to be wowed by the progress of generative artificial intelligence. ChatGPT kicked off a boom in use cases, from creating images to generating content. And with its API, many companies sprung up to take advantage of the power of AI.

You need not look further than the domain registration business to see this play out. Many AI-powered domain name generators sprung to life this year, and they’re pretty darned good. In fact, I sold a domain I found through one of these tools on the aftermarket.

Just about every industry has a use case for AI, and it’s transforming how people work.

It’s also been a boon to the tiny island of Anguilla. It had the good fortune of being assigned the ISO country code AI. It has profited for years from companies registering .ai domains for their businesses, and this went into overdrive in 2013.

In addition to a rapid increase in registrations, the country is profiting by selling expired domains. It started auctioning these names in 2018. It auctions the domains monthly through a partnership with Dynadot (which bought park.io); this month, it grossed over $400k.

It’s not just .ai domains that have seen a lift from the AI boom. This year, chat.com sold for over $10 million — twice! Personally, I sold four AI-related domains on the aftermarket: brainstormAI.com, productivityAI.com, facilityAI.com, and questionAI.com.

As AI has captured the world’s attention, another popular technology has taken a dive. Web3 and blockchain suffered a horrible year, including a near cessation of the market for NFTs and many of web3 leaders doing the perp walk. This has reduced attention on blockchain-based domains, as well as domains adopted by the web3 community. .Xyz saw a fall in aftermarket activity compared to a year ago, although sales are still happening.

Unlike web3, AI has actual use cases that have already been implemented. It’s here to stay.

Post link: 2023 top stories: Artificial intelligence

© DomainNameWire.com 2023. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact editor (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

1. All about these popular .AI domain names
2. Can AI write good domain name descriptions?
3. Will AI change domain name search?

Epik was a big story for the second year in a row.

One of last year’s top stories was still a story this year.

Last year, domain name registrar Epik ran into trouble.

In September 2022, Epik announced that Rob Monster was departing as CEO. This came as a shock; Monster was the founder and face of the company and frequently interacted with domain investors on domain forums and via email.

It turns out there was a reason for the change. Epik owed a lot of customers a lot of money. Rather than keeping escrow and store credit funds separate, Epik used them to fund business operations.

When Monster left, people started to worry and asked for their money. It started a run on the bank, and there wasn’t enough money to pay the customers.

Turning to this year, the company went into triage. It laid off a bunch of employees. Then, customers started complaining about technical issues, including their domains not renewing. It turns out this wasn’t a technical issue; Epik hadn’t been paying the registries. This resulted in ICANN sending a breach notice to the company for failing to renew domains. (Epik later cured the breach.)

One person who was owed money decided to sue.

Despite his absence, Monster continued to have an impact on the company. He and Epik were forced to pay the state of Washington a $10,000 fine for running an unauthorized insurance business called DNProtect.

Then, Epik publicly complained about Monster and asked him to step down from the board. It threatened to sue him.

Epik struck a deal to sell the business in early June. It was held up for a few days until the person who sued over unpaid money agreed to a settlement.

As 2023 comes to a close, Epik has a new (but anonymous) owner. ICANN still hasn’t formally approved the change of control, but it’s business (mostly) as usual at the registrar. It seems most people have been paid back.

Hopefully, Epik won’t make news for the wrong reasons again in 2024.

Post link: 2023 top stories: An Epik failure

© DomainNameWire.com 2023. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact editor (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

1. Epik sued over misuse of funds
2. Epik responds to customer lawsuit over $327,000 debt
3. Epik is sold

Celebrate the holiday in front of your laptop.

Domain investors have something to do on New Year’s Day besides nurse a hangover and watch football: bid on .ai domain names.

This month’s expired .ai auction started on December 22, and since auctions last 10 days, that means you’re going to have to pay attention on the holiday.

There are some doozies in this month’s auction. Vision.ai leads the pack with 84 bids up to $38,000 as of the morning of December 28. Insure.ai, sustaintable.ai, and dog.ai are in the four-figure range and will surely go up from there.

I suspect diehards won’t miss the bidding, but there might be an opportunity to pick up domains for a bit less because people have tuned out over the holidays. As for me, I won’t be glued to my computer all day tracking auctions. I’m heading to the Winter Classic hockey game in Seattle and then tuning in to watch Texas beat Washington in the Sugar Bowl.

Post link: Monthly expired .AI auction ends on New Year’s Day

© DomainNameWire.com 2023. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact editor (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

1. Dynadot auctioning expired .AI domain names
2. My new favorite AI domain generator
3. Over $160k of expired .ai domains sold today

GoDaddy’s Dan.com acquisition continues to reverberate in the domain aftermarket.

You might think it’s odd to say that one company changing its sales commissions is a top story of the year. But GoDaddy is the dominant player in the domain aftermarket, and its rate change greatly impacted the domain resale business.

Let’s turn back the clock a bit.

GoDaddy acquired domain sales platform Dan.com last year for about $70 million. One of the first questions people asked was what this would mean for commissions.

Dan charged just 9% to handle payment and escrow for domains. GoDaddy’s Afternic charged much higher but had a declining scale for bigger transactions: 20% on sales below $5,000, 15% of the amount between that and $25,000, and 10% of the amount above that on these sales.

GoDaddy said it was undertaking a “commission alignment” for its aftermarket brands, which also included Uniregistry before it was shut down.

Most people assumed the rate would increase from 9% to somewhere at or below Afternic’s 20% rate.

Instead, GoDaddy dropped a bomb on the industry in January. It said it was raising rates to 25% with no reduction for bigger sales.

But there was a bit of a carrot-and-stick approach to this: park your domains on a GoDaddy-affiliated service and pay just 15%.

So, people who are willing to use GoDaddy’s various landing page services actually pay less for Afternic sales, at least for lower-priced domains.

But it’s bad news for competition. It’s a blow to the many smaller domain sales businesses like Squadhelp and Efty. Domainers are penalized if they use these companies for landers but sell a domain on the Afternic network.

Afternic is also slowly winding down the ability to self-broker domains. Uni is already dead; you can expect this capability to go away on Dan.com, too.

It’s not all bad news, though. GoDaddy has introduced checkout links for Afternic listings that carry just a 5% commission when you find a buyer, similar to Dan’s program. Afternic also now offers lease-to-own transactions.

And if you sell a lot of domains on Afternic that are pointed to GoDaddy landers, you can save a lot of money. This year, I’ve saved thousands of dollars compared to the old 20% rate.

Post link: 2023 top stories: GoDaddy’s “commission alignment”

© DomainNameWire.com 2023. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact editor (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

1. GoDaddy to change aftermarket commissions on Feb 1
2. Aftermarket alternatives to GoDaddy
3. Lease to Own is finally coming to Afternic – here’s everything you need to know

Organization says community member violated Expected Standards of Behavior.

ICANN is debating what to do after someone deeply entrenched in the domain name ecosystem made highly controversial remarks about Jews.

The issue came to light after ICANN community member Jeffrey Neuman sent a letter (pdf) (and follow up) highlighting comments made by Talal Abu-Ghazaleh. In a TV interview, Abu-Ghazaleh stated:

The Jews do not have any ideology. All they care about is money and interests. I had a friend who was a German cabinet member. I once asked him: ‘When Hitler, may God forgive him, carried out the Holocaust, why didn’t he finish the job and kill all the Jews?’ He said to me: ‘It’s the other way around, but don’t tell anyone I said this. He left a group of them on purpose, so that people would know why we carried out the Holocaust. When you would be tormented by them, you would know the reason.

Abu-Ghazaleh is a well-known intellectual property practitioner and founder of the Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organization (TAG-Org). He has several interests connected to ICANN:

• TAG-Org hosts an instance of ICANN’s L Root in Jordan
• Two non-profits Abu Ghazaleh chairs formed the UDRP provider Arab Center for Dispute Resolution in Intellectual Property
• He is affiliated with the ICANN-accredited registrar TAG-Domains
• His law firm represents Complainants in UDRPs (and has a rather poor record)

In a response (pdf) to Neuman on December 26, ICANN interim CEO Sally Costerton called Abu-Ghazaleh’s comments “beyond offensive or objectionable” and that “We want to make it absolutely clear that hate speech has no place in ICANN’s multistakeholder process, and that Talal Abu Ghazaleh’s statements violate ICANN’s Expected Standards of Behavior.”

Costerton said that ICANN is trying to figure out how it can respond using ICANN’s policies and processes. ICANN has contacted Talal Abu-Ghazaleh and TAG-Org to inform them that the comments violate ICANN’s Expected Standards of Behavior and has referred the matter to ICANN’s Office of the Ombuds.

Post link: ICANN debates action after community member’s antisemitic comments

© DomainNameWire.com 2023. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact editor (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

No related posts.

Domain sales, particularly high-dollar ones, are lacking.

The Covid-19 pandemic brought a surge in domain name registrations and aftermarket domain purchases. Domain activity has quickly reverted to the mean, and that’s bad news for the domain name aftermarket. Couple that with reduced venture capital investing, and the top end of the market is particularly struggling.

Two public companies have reported a slowdown on the domain resale side of the business.

Escrow.com, part of Freelancer.com (OTCMKTS: FLNCF), reported a slowdown starting last year. While there have been signs of life in 2023, the overall picture has been dim.

Likewise, GoDaddy (NYSE: GDDY) has reported lackluster demand in its $400-million-a-year aftermarket business.

Both Escrow.com and GoDaddy said there has been a shortage of high-dollar sales. Domain investors also claim the top end of the market is soft, save for a couple of outliers.

That said, the lower end of the market seems to be holding strong. And artificial intelligence-related domains have experienced a stellar year.

Also hurting the aftermarket is the softness in expired domain name sales. This is due in part to fewer new registrations occurring post-pandemic. Many new registrations expire the following year, leading to more domains to sell in the expiry stream.

The primary domain registration market is also down, and China might be somewhat to blame.

Post link: 2023 top stories: A slower aftermarket

© DomainNameWire.com 2023. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact editor (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

1. How will shrinking demand for domains impact aftermarket?
2. GoDaddy credits aftermarket for growth (again)
3. Quantifying the domain aftermarket slowdown

I liked GoDaddy’s auction, but I also have some suggestions for improving it.

GoDaddy (NYSE: GDDY) ran auctions of some of its NameFind inventory on GoDaddy Auctions for the past couple of weeks.

I think it was wise for GoDaddy to run this auction for a couple of reasons.

First, we know from experience that end-of-year auctions to domain investors can be successful. Many domain investors take money off the table at the end of the year to lower their taxes, depending on how their business is structured and where they are located. Thought Convergence held a highly successful auction at the end of 2021 and I think the end-of-year timing was instrumental to the success.

Second, this auction should help GoDaddy pad its aftermarket results for Q4. I suspect that’s why it ran this auction.

Here are some things I like about how GoDaddy ran the auction:

• No reserves – GoDaddy set different minimum bid prices for each domain rather than setting reserves. This is 10x better than bidding on a domain only to find out the reserve is more than you’re willing to pay. This also prevented bidders from driving up prices below reserves for fun (yes, people do this). It would have been even better if GoDaddy started every domain at the standard minimum bid price, but I understand why it didn’t.
• Clean title – I won one of the three letter .com domains in the auction. The three three-letter domains I saw all sold near the floor price for these domains, but I think they have an added value compared to other short domains you can buy: clean title. These domains were all part of old portfolios and had a clean ownership history dating back at least 10 years. Compare that to many short domains that have bounced around between multiple owners…and might have been stolen.
• Changing inventory – GoDaddy posted new inventory daily rather than all at once. This allowed the company to select inventory based on what types of domains were selling in the auction.

Here are some things I’d like GoDaddy to do differently if it runs another NameFind auction:

• Announce it earlier – I’d like to keep more dry powder available for an auction like this. The auction was announced very late, and I had already made some large domain purchases heading into December.
• Run the auction earlier – I bid on eight domains in the auction and won two of them (dql .com and swizzle .com). I would have bid more on some of the domains I lost, but I was traveling and spending time with extended family last week. This made it difficult to bid. An ideal time would be to start the week after Thanksgiving and run the auction for a couple of weeks.
• Provide previous pricing information – All domains NameFind sold were available for purchase before the auction, and I suspect nearly all of them had “buy now” prices. I also imagine all of the domains sold for less than the buy-now prices. It would have been helpful to me to see what these prices were when bidding. If NameFind priced some of them super high, I would have felt confident bidding more in the auction because I’d know part of the reason the domain hadn’t sold yet was the price.

Overall, I was happy to pick up a couple of nice domains to finish 2024.

Post link: My thoughts on the GoDaddy NameFind auction

© DomainNameWire.com 2023. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact editor (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

1. How a GoDaddy lead looks on DomainNameSales.com
2. This company might be willing to pay $12,500 for a new second level domain name
3. 32 end user domain name sales up to $50,000

Google exited the domain name business this year, giving Squarespace a huge opportunity.

Perhaps the most surprising news this year was Squarespace’s acquisition of Google Domains.

Squarespace (NYSE: SQSP) announced the $180 million acquisition in June and closed on it in September.

At the time the deal was announced, Google Domains had about 10 million domains under management. Over half of those were .com domains, making Google the #5 registrar by .com domains under management.

Google entered the business in 2014, at first taking it very slowly. But the registrar became a juggernaut thanks to a combination of its brand name, high Google rankings, and attaching domains to other Google products.

It’s unclear why Google exited the business, but I have some thoughts.

The news came as a shock to many people, including competing domain registrars. It seems that few were invited to bid on the asset, and Squarespace might have gotten a leg up due to an existing partnership with Google.

Squarespace isn’t new to domain names. It’s an accredited registrar with about a million domains under management pre-acquisition. But its customer base is very different; it’s mostly made up of people who created a website on Squarespace and attached a domain name to it.

Its registrar functionality is basic. It wasn’t until October this year that it added domain forwarding and bulk updates.

It remains to be seen how many Google Domains customers Squarespace is able to retain as domains come up for renewal. The easiest thing for people to do is keep their domains there, but if Squarespace decides to increase its prices, many will consider switching.

Google Domains charged $12 for most domains. Squarespace previously charged $20 but now charges $12 for the first year and $20 afterward. It promised Google Domains customers that it would honor Google’s existing prices for a year.

One registrar is aggressively courting Squarespace’s domain name customers. Automattic, creator of WordPress, is offering to cover the transfer and renewal price for domains moved to its platform.

Despite being peeved that they weren’t given the opportunity to acquire Google Domains, other registrars must be thrilled. Getting rid of a tough name-brand competitor means more business for them.

Post link: Top stories: Squarespace buys Google Domains

© DomainNameWire.com 2023. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact editor (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

1. Squarespace completes Google Domains acquisition
2. Squarespace upgrades domain platform after Google Domains acquisition
3. Revenue and bookings up 16% at Squarespace ahead of Google Domains acquisition

Google announced this morning that they are releasing their TLD registry platform, Nomulus, which is written in Java, under an Apache 2.0 license. The company uses the software to run their own registry for their TLDs. Portfolio TLD applicant Donuts has partnered with Google and contributed to the source code – they will also be running a public test instance of the system, which is geared towards being run on the Google Cloud Platform. So far, Rightside (NASDAQ: NAME) has been operating Donuts’ registry backend.

Also covered by:

• DomainNameWire: Google open sources domain registry, Donuts collaborates as pressure on registry providers mounts. The article focusses on the rising pressure on Domain Registry Operators, and a potential switch of platforms by Donuts away from Rightside.

Here’s the full press release:

Date: Tuesday, October 18, 2016 8:00am PT

Author: Ben McIlwain, Software Engineer

Today, Google is proud to announce the release of Nomulus, a new open source cloud-based registry platform that powers Google’s top level domains (TLDs). We’re excited to make this piece of Internet infrastructure available to everyone.

TLDs are the top level of the Internet Domain Name System (DNS), and they collectively host every domain name on the Internet.  To manage a TLD, you need a domain name registry — a behind-the-scenes system that stores registration details and DNS information for all domain names under that TLD. It handles WHOIS queries and requests to buy, check, transfer, and renew domain names. When you purchase a domain name on a TLD using a domain name registrar, such as Google Domains, the registrar is actually conducting business with that TLD’s registry on your behalf. That’s why you can transfer a domain from one registrar to another and have it remain active and 100% yours the entire time.

The project that became Nomulus began in 2011 when the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced the biggest ever expansion of Internet namespace, aimed at improving choice and spurring innovation for Internet users. Google applied to operate a number of new generic TLDs, and built Nomulus to help run them.

We designed Nomulus to be a brand-new registry platform that takes advantage of the scalability and easy operation of Google Cloud Platform. Nomulus runs on Google App Engine and is backed by Google Cloud Datastore, a highly scalable NoSQL database. Nomulus can manage any number of TLDs in a single shared instance and supports the full range of TLD functionality required by ICANN, including the Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP), WHOIS, reporting, and trademark protection. It is written in Java and is released under the Apache 2.0 license.

We hope that by providing access to our implementation of core registry functions and up-and-coming services like Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP), we can demonstrate advanced features of Google Cloud Platform and encourage interoperability and open standards in the domain name industry for registry operators like Donuts. With approximately 200 TLDs, Donuts has made early contributions to the Nomulus code base and has spun up an instance which they’ll be sharing soon.

For more information, view Nomulus on GitHub.

No related posts.