Author Archives: The Domains

About The Domains

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 5K domain names . Michael is also a Director of RightoftheDot.com which is a consultant in the new gTLD space and a broker of super premium domains. Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest this year.

Thu 26th June 2014
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As ICANN Meeting Ends “China Launches Campaign To Control The Internet” - Talk about a disturbing headline Chinatopix.com just published a post entitled “China Launches Campaign To Control The Internet” According to the story, China’s communist government intends to impose on the Internet the same “guiding principles” it currently uses to stifle online dissent within China.” The decision of the U.S.  to relinquish its oversight of ICANN, is seen by China as an opportunity to increase its influence over the Internet. Political analysts said China wants a “new ... read more ...
 
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IPOFinancial: “No Way Godaddy’s IPO Can Move Forward As Is With Google Entering The Market” - I chatted with David Menlow, who is the founder IPOfinancial.com yesterday about Godaddy’s planned IPO and Google’s announcement this week  that they were entering the domain name registrar business “I don’t see how  GoDaddy’s IPO could “move forward.” “If  it does, the valuations of this deal has to be radically” “Whatever valuation models were being thrown around had to be completely redone” IPOfinancial.com  “has been serving the investment community with information ... read more ...
 
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MyRedbook.com Seized By Feds & Owners Arrested - According to Sfgate.com,  two San Fransisco based websites MyRedbook.com and sfredbook.com were seized by the federal government yesterday. The alleged operators of the sites, Eric Omuro, and Annmarie Lanoce, were arrested Wednesday. “Omuro was charged with 24 counts of money laundering in connection with alleged transfers of the website’s revenue into bank accounts. “Federal authorities are seeking to seize $5.4 million in cash and property from Omuro and Lanoce, the alleged windfall from ... read more ...
 
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.Com Breaks Through The 113.5 Million Domain Mark; Adding 500K Domains In 3 Months - According to zone file for the .com registry the number of .Com domain name registrations has passed 113.5 Million domains for the first time. Of course everyday tens of thousands of .com domains are deleted for non-renewal and tens of thousands are more are registered. Most days result in a net positive gain for the .com registry while its also not unusually to see a net loss for certain days were more domains are deleted than registered. It was on March 22nd 2014 that we reported that the .Com ... read more ...
 
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Here Is The GAC Communique From The ICANN London That Was Just Released - The Government Advisory Counsel (GAC) has just issued its Communique from the ICANN London meeting. It has been the practice of the GAC to issue such a Communique at the end of each ICANN meeting outlining its decisions its advice to the ICANN Board and any developments or other thoughts arising out of the meeting. Here it is: 1. Transition of US Stewardship of IANA and Strengthening ICANN Accountability The GAC is committed to engaging with the current processes dealing with transition of US Government ... read more ...
 
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1st Day New gTLD Totals .Tools 1,759.Supplies 1,143; .Parts 1,010; .Supply 864; .Industries 566 - Several new gTLD’s went into its first day of general availability yesterday. For the second week in a row, no new gTLD that launched  had any particularly great results. Matter of fact the total amount of all the new gTLD’s that went into GA yesterday was just over 5,500 domains Here are the total number of registrations after the 1st day of general availability including all Sunrise registrations and domain names taken in the Early Access Program (EAP). .Tools 1,759 .Supplies 1,143 .Parts ... read more ...
 
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Afnic: “Launch of a new TLDs: effect of a 50/50 law” - French Study Has Some Interesting Assumptions Afnic the organization that governs the .fr extension put out a report where they took a look at the 50/50 law and how it correlates to new gtlds. It seems the study refers to a law they say is well known among domain professionals. I am not sure this is well known, if it is true then some new gtlds are in for a tough time. One of the points of the study concerned .club, “The .club TLD will probably join the top three TLDs once the first month of its ... read more ...
Wed 25th June 2014
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Our 7000th Post on TheDomains - 204 days after hitting post #6000 TheDomains.com has reached post #7000.  This post is actually 7,001 number 7000 is here Thank you to all our readers and advertisers who come each day and read and comment. Yesterday was actually the third highest traffic day in the history of the site, a testament to the hard work Michael has put in to keep the site moving forward and not slowing down. ... read more ...
 
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If Google Domains Is Going To Be About New gTLD’s, Google.Domains Should Be Resolving -     The domain name world is still chatting about this weeks announcement that Google is getting into the domain registrar business. The “official site” right now for Google Domains is a subdomain  of Google.com: domains.google.com If you type in GoogleDomains.com into your browser you will be re-directed to the subdomain. However if you type in the domain name Google.Domains into your browser well the domain doesn’t resolve. Google owns the domain name Google.Domains. The domain is registered ... read more ...
 
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Google Releases Data to Help With Adwords Confusion - Google has released a couple pieces of data over the last two days that are worth reviewing for those who use the Google Adwords product. Google released a white paper to try to dispel some myths when it comes to the subject of quality score. As Ginny Marvin pointed out on Search Engine Land, There has always been a healthy amount of debate over the importance of Quality Score as an indicator of Google AdWords success and the amount of focus that should be devoted to it. Today, Google issued a whitepaper ... read more ...
 
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DomainNameSales; Maybe You Should Put Filters On Offers, we Just Got One For $5,433,464,834 - We love the folks over at DomainNameSales.com but guys you do have to put some filters in place. We got an offer overnight on the domain name nudelive.com for $5,433,464,834. The offer went through the DomainNameSales.com system and generated an email to us relating the offer and prompted us to respond. The person making the offer is located in Turkey and uses a Hotmail address. This kind of stuff just makes their system look bad and some reasonable controls need to be implemented so people don’t ... read more ...
 
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Sci.Technology Suspended in URS “Sci” is not a Generic Term though Rather a Trademark” - The new gTLD domain name sci.technology was ordered suspended by a Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) examiner. The Complainant SANMINA CORPORATION of San Jose, California filed the URS complaint based on its U.S. Trademark Registration issued June 2, 1992, on the term “SCI” (the “Trademark”). The Trademark is for “manufacturing of electrical, electronic, electromechanical and mechanical products to the order and specification of others”, and “design and development of electrical, electronic, ... read more ...
 
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Forget.me Is Launched To Help European Citizens Enforce Their Right To Be Forgotten -   SearchEngineLand.com just covered the launch of another great .Me domain name, Forget.me which is an online service which acts  “as a middleman between an individual and Google…catering to individuals who want to exercise their right to be forgotten” A recent European Court ruling search engine must provide to its citizens the :right to be forgotten” and allow them to  demand that certain links be removed from search engine results. Forget.me says: “Exercise your Google “right to ... read more ...
 
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New gTLD’s Break The 1.3 Million Mark; .XYZ Tops Over 200K; .Berlin Tops 140K & .Club Over 75K - The total number of new domain extension (gTLD) registrations topped 1.3 Million overnight at ntldstats.com. According to ntldstats.com there are just about 1,310,000 new gTLD registered .XYZ is now also topped 200,000 registrations sitting at 208,792 registrations. 86.5% of all .XYZ registrations or over 180,600 are at Network Solutions which continues to give free .XYZ domain names to certain customers who do not opt out of the free domain offer. over 90% of all Network Solutions new gTLD registration ... read more ...
Tue 24th June 2014
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Victim’s Of Terrorists Holding a Billion Dollars+ In Judgements Seeks Seizure of .IR Registry By ICANN - According to a press release, A lawyer representing a “group of American victims of terror and family members of those who have been injured or killed in attacks sponsored by the Islamic Republic of Iran (Iran) have moved to attach and seize the ccTLD domain registry of Iran, .Ir “The families, who hold unsatisfied American federal court judgments amounting to more than a billion dollars against the Iranian government seek to own all the “top-level domain” (TLD) names provided by the US to ... read more ...
 
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Endurance Issues A Statement Claiming Google Domains Will be Good For Their Business -     Endurance International (EIGI) issued a statement on Google (GOOG) announcement yesterday that it is testing a new domain service. Shares of Endurance recovered nicely today, as shares wound up being down only a little of 5%, closing at $15 a share. Endurance had traded as low as $13.38 during the day. Endurance said they “expect Google’s new initiative to stimulate demand for hosting and web presence solutions by increasing the number of domains that are created and actively used. “Endurance ... read more ...
 
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Sedo Transactions Total $900K As Mi.Co.Id Sells For $60,000 - Over the past week, 476 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via Sedo MLS, totaling $900,000. 53% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings. Highlights of public sales are: · Top .coms: RoyalFortunes.com at 35,000 USD · Top ccTLD: mi.co.id at 60,000 USD · Top “other” TLD: Parfum.net at 4,200 EUR Mi.Co.ID is very interesting .id is the ccTLD for Indonesia. I’m not sure I have ever seen a five figure sale for that extension but the domain is owned under the control ... read more ...
 
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InfoWorld: “Privacy concerns dawn over ‘new’ Google domain registration service” - InfoWorld has concerns about Google and their new domain registration service. Google’s invitation-only Domains name registration service works a lot like the old one but raises new questions about privacy and ad scraping The big unanswered question: What about privacy of data stored on the domain? If Google is your registrar, can Google reach in and finger all of the data associated with the domain, in pursuit of better-honed advertising? I turned to the Google Apps Administrator security and ... read more ...
 
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TheMarijuanaCompanies.com Launches With 7,500 Domains: JointLovers.com; WeedMedia.com - According to a press release out today, Northsight Capital, Inc. (OTCBB: NCAP) announced today that it has launched its corporate website, www.TheMarijuanaCompanies.com According to the press release the company owns over 7,500 related domains. “According to its site “The Marijuana Companies will be comprised of a group of marijuana related websites that are being developed by the company. Leaving nothing to the imagination, The Marijuana Companies will provide its audience with a means to ... read more ...
 
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Matomy Media Group Increases Ownership of Team Internet AG From 20% to 70% - According to a press release, “Global digital performance-based marketing company Matomy Media Group today announced that it has acquired a majority ownership position in the Munich-based direct navigation search company Team Internet AG. As part of the deal, Matomy will increase its ownership stake in Team Internet from 20% to 70% and will integrate the company’s products into its multichannel suite of performance-based marketing capabilities. Team Internet generated revenue of $23.3 million ... read more ...
 
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Whose Afraid Of Google Domains? Shareholders Of Web.com & Endurance - Shares of Web.com are sinking in trading today, following on With Google’s announcement yesterday of its Google Domains registrar. As of publication, Shares of Web.com are trading down $7.35 or over 21% at $27.25 Shares of Web.com closed yesterday at $34.60. Web.com has a 52 week high of $37.72 and a low of $22.72 Shares today have traded as low as $26.32 Shares of Endurance International Group Holdings, Inc. (EIGI) are down almost 14%, down $2.22 at $13.66. Share of other publicly traded registrars ... read more ...
 
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XNXX.com Loses UDRP On XXNX.com - A three member UDRP panel has rejected the owner of a popular adult webiste XNXX.com attempt to grab the domain name XXNX.com in a Very interesting opinion. The complaint was brought by WGCZ S.R.O. who was represented by Randazza Legal Group The domain holder was represented by The Muscovitch Law Firm Here are the arguments made by the domain holder: “”The Respondent first claims to have registered the disputed domain name, , on or about November 29, 2002, and submits what are said to be the ... read more ...
 
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Auction Day At ICANN: Here is How You Can Watch & Bid On The .Global Auction Online - The Live .Global Auction event is being held today from London during ICANN 50. The auction will start approximately at 5:30 London time which is 12:30pm EST/ 9:30 PST Here is a short information sheet on how you can bid online or watch the auction. Yes there will be a Live Webcam broadcast of the auction. The Auction will be broadcast live. You HAVE to sign up even if you just want to watch the auction and the webcast. Below is the updated link to register for the live online .global auction. You ... read more ...
 
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Quick Poll:What Will Google Domains Market Share Of The Registrar Market Be A Year After Launch? - Yesterday news that Google is launching a retail domain name registrar, generated a ton of press outside the domain industry. There is a lot of speculation of how successful he entry of Google into the registrar business will be, how much market share will Google Domains will gain and how it will effect other registrars, mostly Godaddy whose is going public this year. As we know Godaddy is the worlds largest registrar, with its sister registrar Wild West Domains also in the top 10 Web.com registrars ... read more ...
Mon 23rd June 2014
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Stolen Three Letter .Com, IDA.com Awarded Back To Owner In UDRP After Godaddy Acct Hacked -     The Asian Domain Name Dispute Resolution Centre (“the Centre”) one of the “new” UDRP providers returned the allegedly stolen domain name IDA.com to World Hair Cosmetics Co Ltd, of Hong Kong which owned the domain since  2005. The panel writes: “In April, 2014, the Complainant discovered that its account with GoDaddy.com had been hacked and that, as a result, the Registrar had been changed to PublicDomain Registry Ltd and the Complainant was no longer the registrant. The Complainant ... read more ...