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.cloud gets the China blessing

Kevin Murphy, November 26, 2018, Domain Registries

.cloud, run by Italian registry Aruba, has become the latest TLD to get the official nod to sell in China.
The blessing from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology came at the end of October and the company announced it today.
The accreditation means .cloud domains sold to residents of the Chinese mainland will now be resolvable, and subject to China’s onerous censorship rules.
It’s the first Latin-script TLD to be approved by MIIT since July.
.cloud says it currently has 155,000 domains registered to customers in 180 countries.

.cloud passes 20,000 names on day one

Kevin Murphy, February 17, 2016, Domain Registries

The newly launched gTLD .cloud passed 20,000 domains under management one day after entering general availability.
About 25 hours after the 1500 UTC launch yesterday, 20,347 domains had been registered, according to head of registry operations Francesco Cetraro.
He said 17,991 of those names were registered in GA.
The gTLD is priced around the $20 to $25 mark at the popular registrars I checked.
Over 20,000 names is a pretty decent start, putting the the Aruba-owned TLD within the top 100 new gTLDs by volume.
Volume-wise, it’s already in the same ball-park as the likes of .global, .sexy and .uno, which have each been around for well over a year.
Including dot-brands, there are now close to 900 new gTLDs, only about half of which have more than 100 names.

.cloud gets 500 sunrise regs

Kevin Murphy, January 15, 2016, Domain Registries

Aruba, the .cloud gTLD registry, said it received 500 applications during its sunrise phase, which closed this afternoon.
While low by pre-2012 standards, it’s a relatively respectable performance for a new gTLD, where sunrises periods consistently result in double-digit registrations.
It’s almost certainly in the top 10 for 2012-round gTLDs.


I gather there was only one duplicate application during the period, which ran from November 16.
Before sunrise began, Aruba already had about 30 “pioneer” registrants in the web hosting space, including Ubuntu and Weebly.
Landrush is set to kick off January 25, with general availability following February 16. Retail pricing will be around the $25 a year mark.

Free .cloud domains on offer to pioneer brands

Kevin Murphy, July 2, 2015, Domain Registries

Aruba, the recently anointed .cloud gTLD registry, plans to give away up to 100 free .cloud domains to trademark owners as part of its launch program.
The Italian company also today revealed a rough launch schedule that will see sunrise begin mid-way through the fourth quarter.
Participating in Aruba’s “Pioneer” program will be free for trademark owners with a decent marketing plan, a brand-match domain, and a web site that can go live at the end of September.
Up to 100 domains can be allocated for promotional purposes before sunrise begins, per ICANN rules.
Those looking to grab a generic dictionary word in .cloud “may require further negotiation and incur additional costs”, the registry web site says.
Wannabe pioneers have until August 21 to submit their ideas.
Aruba, which beat Minds + Machines, Symantec, Amazon, Google, CloudNames and Donuts to .cloud at private auction last November, plans to go to general availability early next year.