Google Returns to China with Google Play - NiceNIC.NET

Domain name registrations suggest Google is indeed going back to China with Google Play.

Google Play ChinaIt appears that Google Play, the search giant’s app store, is indeed making another play for the Chinese market. There have been rumors about a return to China in recent months.

Google registered a number of domain names related to Google Play in China yesterday and today, including:
googleplaychina.com
googleplaychinaedition.com
googlechinaaccount.com
googlechinaedition.com
gcaapis.com
gcaauth.com
gpceauth.com
gpceimages.com
gpcedata.com
and about a dozen related domain names.

As this Venture Beat article points out, Google Play could grow much faster if it reentered China.

These domain name registrations suggest the company is indeed getting ready to make the move back into china.

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Recent 36 End User Domain Name Sales - NiceNIC.NET

On July 15, 2015, a custom tea machine maker, video game company and swimsuit seller buy domain names.

Sedo rebounded from the slow holiday week with good sales results, handling USD 1.5 million in domain name transactions. It made some good four figure sales to end users, including MyHappy.com, Smartel.com and Clone.org.

TPay.com USD 36,000 – The owner of online payment system Transferuj.pl.
MyHappy.com USD 6,870 – The makers of the new app MyHappy were not happy with their domain name MyHappyDaily.com.
PSAdmin.com USD 6,500 – Punter Southall Group offers pension administration, hence PSadmin.com.
TeaBOT.com USD 5,800 – The makers of the TeaBOT customized tea platform upgraded from MyTeaBOT.com. Daniel Negari, you should check out this product.
Smartel.com EUR 5,800 – this domain name forwards to "smart hotel" Smartel. The whois is in the name of a software company, but I assume it’s managing the site for the hotel.
B4.com.au USD 4,400 – Australian real estate company Before Group Pty Ltd. They own the domain name B4Group.com.au.
Clone.org USD 5,000 – National Cloning Laboratories in New Jersey.
WellnessConsultants.org USD 900 – a San Diego company called Wellness Consultants.
Mob.co USD 1,020 – Mobco bvba, a business mobility company. It uses the domain name Mobco.ba.
Motorlease.com EUR 2,999 – Auto leasing company Motorlease Corporation shortened its domain name from MotorLeaseCorp.com.
Gemini.me USD 1,999 – Gemini Film Circuit, a film processing company in India. Its web address is geminiindia.in.
SnowSystem.com EUR 3,680 – Sandhills Publishing returned to Sedo to buy another domain name. It also recently paid USD 3,000 for Snowsoft.com.
DangerousGolf.com USD 3,369 and DangerousDriving.com USD 1,177 – Three Field Entertainment is a new gaming company. It describes its first game as "an innovative new twist on a sports game that’s fast, funny and heavy on social multiplayer." I’m going to guess it’s a golf or driving game. :)
GodGame.com USD 1,000 – GoodGame Studios, makers of the Empire game, bought another domain in the aftermarket. It’s a typo of its GoodGame.com domain.
FactorWise.com USD 10,000 – Investment firm Gerstein Fisher has trademarked "Multi-Factor" to describe its investment approach. Now it has a domain name to go with it.
FeatherBanners.com GBP 1,200- Proflags BV, seller of advertisement banners.
YachtAndBoat.com USD 1,000 – Boat sales site YachtAndBoat.com.au dropped the .AU.
WebMarshall.com USD 2,119 – Intellectual Property protection company WebSheriff bought this similar domain name.
WithMi.com EUR 4,100 – Swim With Mi, seller of swimming shorts. It uses the domain name SwimWithMi.com, so perhaps it’s broadening its offerings or just wanted the shorter domain name.

On July 22, 2015, a look at 16 domain names sold on Sedo last week that were purchased by end users.

Sedo handled about a million dollars worth of domain name transactions last week with 499 domains. Many of the biggest sales — such as Frank Schilling’s USD 66,000 sale of newy.com — are still in the transfer process. At that price, it’s surely an end user purchase.

SmartThings.co.uk USD 1,000 – Mark Monitor has been buying SmartThings domain names, most likely for Samsung, which recently acquired internet of things company SmartThings.
UTZ.org USD 7,500 – UTZ Certified, a sustainable farming group. It forwards the domain name to UTZCertified.org.
Partizan.co.uk GBP 999 – Partizan Recruitment Outsourcing Limited, a UK company.
WeWork.org USD 900 – Law firm Fross Zelnick Lehrman & Zissu, P.C. I imagine their client is co-working space company WeWork.
MobileBanking.com.br USD 5,000 – Bradesco Celular, which forwards the domain name to bradescocelular.com.br. I don’t know Portuguese, but it seems they are a mobile banking company as the new domain name suggests.
TheScoreesport.com USD 799 – Sports media company theScore Inc bought another domain name. This company recently sued the maker of an app called Score!
SuffolkPD.com USD 2,000 – City of Suffolk, Virginia.
fbet.net USD 1,499 – The domain name is registered to Leonum Limited. Its the same company that owns the longer fonbet.com.
Perfectha.com GBP 9,500 Dermatology company Sinclair Pharma, which sells a product called Perfectha for "Facial Volume loss and Wrinkle Correction"
CasaCordoba.com EUR 790 – The California Spanish restaurant called Casa Cordoba has been using the subdomain casacordoba.us.com. Big upgrade here.
RakeTech.com USD 995 – RakeTech Group LTD, an affiliate marketing company for gaming sites, has been using the matching .org domain name.
SalonWholesale.com USD 4,158 – The Modern Man, seller of male grooming products.
LongStayHotels.com USD 2,200 – Success Hotel Management GmbH in Germany
GFT.co EUR 1,500 – GFT Technologies AG, a USD 650 million (market cap) tech company that owns the matching GFT.com domain name. You can deduce that someone at the company mistyped the domain name and pushed to buy the .co version.
PCProgram.com USD 1,000 – Sacremento software company Pt Technology Inc.
MaderaGroup.com USD 5,500 – Madera Hotel Management Limited in Hong Kong.

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Trending Keywords in .COM Domain Name in May and June - NiceNIC.NET

Verisign has published its monthly “trending keywords” report, highlighting the keywords making the biggest jump from the May to June in .com domain name registrations.

Used, Gay, and three keywords matching new TLDS make the list.

"Used" was number one for the month. According to Verisign DomainView, there was a big spike in “used” domains registered or renewed on June 30. Over 1,700 .com domains were registered/renewed.

The Verisign trending chart only takes into consideration new registrations, which can’t be filtered on DomainView. But also keep in mind that “used” falls into other words, like conFUSED and focUSED.

Gay was the #5 trending keyword. It probably would have been higher if it weren’t for strong registration numbers in prior months.

I find it noteworthy that three of the trending keywords are also new TLDs: Zone, Buzz and Education.

Here’s the complete list:

.COM
1. used
2. education
3. zone
4. like
5. gay
6. garage
7. buzz
8. zhong
9. Nissan
10. treatment

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ICANN Partners With Chinese Data Center Against Cyber Attacks - NiceNIC.NET

ICANN and Chinese Internet research center ZDNS’s recent collaboration led to the installation of a new L-Root service which is supposed to increase the network’s resistance against various sorts of attacks (such as DDoS).

 

This was possible by the Chinese counterpart offering the logistic part while ICANN provided the technology necessary to implement the L-root instance.

According to the director of ZDNS, what is expected eventually is a greater performance of theChinese Internet services and a much more improved framework.

At the same time, this should lead to a better enhanced security and a faster reaction time for Internet queries, after other collaborations with Chinese partners to instal L-Root instances (there are currently thirteen of them in China).

Computers usually transmit information by using addresses under the form of numbers, whereas people prefer using names. It is considered that there will be a greater efficiency to spread the root information in a geographic way and to duplicate the servers, so this is why ICANN will get involved more in the future to increase overall security.

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ccTLD Approved for Macao by ICANN - NiceNIC.NET

A new ccTLD string was released for Macao by ICANN, at their official meeting in Seoul, after going through the evaluation and approval process requested in such cases.

There are also other countries who have been submitting similar requests, since 16th of November 2009, following the rule that the territory name has to be of a script other than Latin.

 

Regarding the necessary steps, there are three of them in order to obtain approval:

1. One has to prepare all the documentation and find agreement within the local community and then submit the application at http://forms.icann.org/idn/apply.php
2. The assessment of requests from a technical and linguistic point of view.
3. The successful requests then are submitted to the email address root-mgmt@iana.org.

So far there is a number of 36 countries which have been evaluated positively, out of which 29 received delegation within the DNS root system. ICANN promises to make domains in non-Latin country code available as soon as they pass the evaluation process via the Fast Track Process.

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Afilias wants to buy your failed gTLD - NiceNIC.NET

Afilias is on an overt campaign to snap up struggling new gTLDs at bargain basement prices.

"In the neighborhood of a dozen” gTLD operators responded seriously to Afilias’ booth at last month’s ICANN meeting in Buenos Aries, (pictured), Afilias chief marketing officer Roland LaPlante told DI in an interview today.

 

The company could potentially buy up tens of gTLDs over the coming year, LaPlante said.

"If all of these 500 strings with less than 5,000 names in them start looking for a new owner, it’s going to be a pretty active marketplace,” he said.

"There are entrants in the market who either have found the market is not as they expected, or results are not what they need, or for whatever other reason they’re coming to the conclusion this isn’t the business they should be in and they’re looking for options,” LaPlante said.

"There’s been a cold splash of water in the face for a lot of people who didn’t expect it, they’re struggling with relatively low revenues compared to what they might have expected,” he said. “They’re likely to be looking for options.”

Afilias would be happy to take these contracts off their current owners’ hands, for the right price.

"Frankly, we’re not going to be paying huge prices for them,” LaPlante.

"We’ve run into a number of folks who still have fairly inflated opinions of what their string is worth,” he said. “Some of these strings are attractive, but they’re going to need a lot more time to mature.”

Afilias believes that the economies of scale it already has in place would enable it to turn a profit at a much lower registration volume, perhaps under 50,000 names, and that it has the patience and financial strength to wait for its acquisitions to hit those volumes.

"We’re very conservative in our volume estimates,” LaPlante said.

Afilias currently has 26 new gTLDs as back-end and 13 as contracted registry operator.

The company is basically looking for acquisitions where the seller’s looming alternative might be the Emergency Back-End Registry Operator, and where the fees associated with an auction might be a bit too rich.

While LaPlante jokingly compared the proposition to the “We Buy Any Car” business model, he admitted that some registries are less attractive than others.

gTLDs with a lot of restrictions or monitoring would be treated with much more caution — Afilias was not interested in .hiv, which failed to sell at auction recently, for example — and would be skeptical about registries that have given away large numbers of free domains.

"We’d like to pick up strings that have good potential for a profitable amount of volume,” he said.

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