Amazon joining GlobalBlock

Amazon Registry is planning to join the GlobalBlock trademark-blocking system, judging by ICANN records.

The company has filed a Registry Services Evaluation Process request asking for 33 of its gTLDs to be able to offer a “Label Blocking Service”.

That’s usually code for GlobalBlock, the GoDaddy-led service that allows trademark owners to block their marks across hundreds of TLDs, pseudo-TLDs and blockchain naming systems.

Indeed, the Amazon RSEP is pretty much a copy-paste of the usual documentation registries file when they’re gearing up to join GlobalBlock.

Adding Amazon’s portfolio would bring GlobalBlock’s coverage up to 813 extensions.

Some of the gTLDs Amazon wants to add are not actually live and on sale yet, which could lead to a weird and rather cheeky situation where the company is selling blocks but not domains in certain gTLDs.

Comment Tagged: amazon, globalblock

Unstoppable buys 10 new registrars

Unstoppable Domains has got 10 new registrar shell companies accredited by ICANN.

According to ICANN records, the companies UnstoppableUS1 LLC through UnstoppableUS10 LLC now have their official accreditations.

Starting off as a seller of strictly blockchain-based names, the company became a registrar of regular domains in 2024 and recently said the vast majority of its business is now in that space.

Buying up shell accreditations gives it more concurrent registry connections and is almost always a way for a registrar to become more competitive in the drop-catching services market.

Comment Tagged: unstoppable

ICANN cleaning house, cans four more registrars

ICANN has withdrawn the accreditations of four more long-defunct registrars, bringing this month’s terminations so far to 11.

They’re all Chinese, though they do not appear to be under common ownership. They are: Qinghai Yunnet Electronics Technology Co, Shandong Huaimi Network Technology Co, Xiamen Booksir Qiyoutong Technology Co and Xiamen Yuwang Technology Co․

What’s notable is how long it’s taken for ICANN to yank their accreditations. It’s been three or four years since Compliance opened tickets on each of them for non-payment of fees.

None of the four have any gTLD domains under management, and some don’t even seem to own their own original domains any more. One had its former web site turned into a blog in 2022. Another has its domain parked and listed for sale.

Comment Tagged: compliance, ICANN, termination

ICANN to throw millions more at cheapo gTLDs

ICANN wants to increase the number of new gTLD applications it will subsidize from its own coffers, as well as the size of the discounts it will provide.

The Applicant Support Program was originally budgeted at $10 million, with half coming from application fees and half coming from the proceeds of auctions from the 2012 application round.

The plan was to offer up to 45 qualifying applicants a 75% discount on their application fees, along with a collection of other perks such as hookups with pro-bono consultants.

But it turns out the ASP was oversubscribed — there are currently 75 organizations vying for the discount, and ICANN seems to suspect most or all will be found eligible for support.

About a month ago, after public comment, the ICANN board of directors requisitioned an extra $4.9 million from the auction proceeds war chest to cover the extra subsidies.

But the Governmental Advisory Committee and At-Large Advisory Committee have both recently recommended that ICANN increases the discount to 85% — about $192,500 of the $227,000 base evaluation fee.

So now the board wants to know if the community is cool with it dipping into the auction proceeds to cover the difference to the tune of an extra $3.2 million.

It’s asking for feedback via correspondence, outside of the usual more formal public comment process, by April 12.

Comment Tagged: applicant support program, asp, ICANN, new gTLDs, next round

Introducing Stringtel, my new free new gTLD tool

I’ve launched Stringtel, a free, industry-first string discovery and risk mitigation tool for new gTLD applicants.

Stringtel is designed to help applicants reduce the risk of their chosen gTLD strings being banned or incurring extra costs during the application process, as well as helping them discover potentially valuable undelegated strings.

The TL;DR

Stringtel gives you data that will help you pick a good string to apply for, and tells you some of the risks that string might present during the application process.

The goal is to help applicants avoid wasting tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on crappy applications.

Risk mitigation

Stringtel implements the string-related rules in the latest version of ICANN’s New gTLD Applicant Guidebook, along with other risk factors, leveraging a database of almost a million possibly problematic strings, to offer applicants a quick look into issues that could kill or complicate their applications.

Enter a string and Stringtel will tell you if it would be blocked outright under AGB rules, or could trigger additional analysis, objections, fees, or contention with other applicants.

Stringtel does dozens of risk checks, along with countless associated string similarity checks, to give you a shortlist of the most likely reasons your application might fail.

Opportunity identification

New gTLDs might have a better chance of succeeding when they reflect how domains are already being used.

Stringtel analyzes over 180 million domains across .com, .net and .org, counting how often specific strings appear immediately to the left of the dot.

If a string is already widely used as a domain ending, that’s a signal of existing demand. For example, if tens of thousands of domains already end in “bakery”, that suggests a .bakery gTLD could have a ready-made market.

Essentially, Stringtel shows you where registrants are already behaving as if the dot were somewhere else — and where a new gTLD could turn that behavior into shorter domains.

It also helps filter out strings that look appealing but have little real-world usage, reducing the risk of applying for a gTLD nobody actually wants.

And because everyone keeps asking…

No, Stringtel does not record your searches. The data would be useless. I have no visibility whatsoever into what you’re searching for. Neither does anybody else.

Thanks to the sponsors

Many thanks go to Stringtel’s two launch sponsors: Hello Registry and John Matson Consulting.

Hello Registry, a venture of leading ccTLD registries CIRA (.ca) and SIDN (.nl) hosted a webinar on March 31 explaining how to apply for and operate a new gTLD.

Matson has launched TLD.fit, a financial modelling tool that helps new gTLD applicants build their business cases before they pull the trigger on an application.

Comment Tagged: ICANN, new gTLDs, next round, stringtel

GlobalBlock signs the two best deals it will ever get

Trademark-blocking service GlobalBlock has added the world’s second and third-largest TLDs to its roster.

China’s .cn and Germany’s .de are now among the hundreds of TLDs, pseudo-TLDs and blockchain namespaces that are covered by the service, which is run by the GoDaddy-managed Brand Safety Alliance.

.cn usually has north of 20 million domains in its zone and .de is currently at around 17.8 million, making them second only to .com in terms of pure domain volume.

These deals are probably the best GlobalBlock will ever get — I can’t see a compelling business case for Verisign to voluntarily sign up .com to the system any time soon.

The next obvious targets would be .uk, .ru, and .nl, the next-largest in the ccTLD space. Several of the larger portfolio gTLD registries such as Radix and XYZ have also yet to join the program.

Nevertheless, GlobalBlock said that it’s recently added 70 “extensions” to the platform, bringing its total to 780.

The outfit says it has blocked five million domains from being registered and recovered over 10,000 domains via Priority AutoCatch, which prevents brand-match names dropping after they expire.

Comment Tagged: .cn, .de, globalblock

Seven registrars get terminated

ICANN has terminated the accreditations of seven registrars for not paying their fees.

Haveaname, InstantNames, MisterNIC, NetEstate, Neudomain, OpenName, and TopSystem — all under common ownership in the US — have all been given their marching orders, effective April 17.

While Compliance said it will transfer the registrars’ domains to another registrar, in practice it seems that none of them actually have any remaining domains under management.

As I previously blogged, the seven all appear to have sacrificed their DUM when they lost their .com accreditations in late 2024. That’s about the same time as ICANN stopped receiving its fees.

Comment Tagged: compliance, ICANN, termination

GoDaddy launches DomainMaxxing to optimize your domains

GoDaddy has unveiled a suite of new premium product features designed to help its customers realize the full value of their domains in increasingly competitive marketplaces.

DomainMaxxing was developed on the premise that domains aren’t merely technical assets anymore, they’re performative status objects, the company explained in a press release.

The subscription-based service adds several string-optimization techniques to the registration path, including semantic resonance analysis, geo-cultural prestige calibration and Alpha-syllable dominance enforcement, the company said.

The basic $9.99-a-month DomainMaxxing tier includes a premium serif pack, a typographic enhancement layer that renders serifs at the DNS level, as well as kerning optimization, for improved cognitive flow in the browser address bar.

“While sans-serif domains resolve 12% faster, they also convert 62% worse in enterprise contexts,” GoDaddy vice president Nick Eldime told DI.

The tier also bundles an “Awareness Pack”, also available at $1.99 a month separately, in which GoDaddy will remind registrants when their domains are about to auto-renew.

A new character integrity verification option ensures your domain “continues to contain the same letters over time”, the company said.

Pricier DomainMaxxing tiers automatically subscribe domain investors into a broker-assisted offer normalization service, built on an adaptive negotiation tone engine, to maximize domain resale value via strategic buyer discouragement.

This may include mild ridicule, disbelief, and in some cases, personalised remarks about the buyer’s net worth, social status, or spouse, Eldime explained.

Also included at the top end is a new “valet” domain parking service, where your domains are professionally escorted to their nameservers by an obsequious, white-gloved AI agent.

“Domains enrolled in DomainMaxxing are no longer merely delegated, but presented,” Eldime said.

Early beta users reported a 47% increase in inbound offers and a noticeable improvement in jawline definition, he said.

Existing GoDaddy customers will be automatically enrolled in DomainMaxxing starting April 1.

Comment Tagged: april 1

.latino gTLD to launch soon

The long-dormant .latino gTLD is set to launch soon, targeting the global Spanish-speaking diaspora.

Registry DISH DBS had originally planned for .latino to be a dot-brand for its Spanish-language satellite TV services, but it’s had a change of heart and now expects it to launch fully open and unrestricted.

General availability has been pencilled in for June 12, according to the registry’s web site and ICANN documents, with sunrise running for the 30 days immediately prior.

It will be the registry’s second launch this year. It went to GA with .mobile last month, so far racking up a modest roughly 4,000 registrations.

.latino will compete against .lat, part of XYZ.com’s stable, which sells for under $2 for a first-year reg and currently has about 125,000 names in its zone.

Comment Tagged: .latino, dish dbs, ga, launch, new gTLDs, sunrise

Amazon readies .pay gTLD

Amazon’s gradual trickle of gTLD releases nlooks set to continue this year, with the company publishing plans for .pay this week.

But it appears that the space will be strictly controlled at first, with general availability not coming until well into 2027.

Amazon’s planning to take .pay to its obligatory 30-day sunrise period, where only registered trademark holders may register names, from April 13, according to ICANN documentation.

From May 13, the company is planning a Limited Registration Period, during which eligibility is restricted to those “that conduct payment transactions online using an approved Payment Service Provider or Third-Party Payment Processor.”

Registrants will have to use their domains “in connection with payment-related services, including but not limited to processing payments, facilitating e-commerce transactions, or providing payment gateway services” or risk suspension.

General availability is not expected until February next year.

Comment Tagged: amazon, launch, new gTLDs, pay, sunrise