Afnic Takes A look at Year Zero For The New gTLDs – What have we learned so far ?

Afnic published a report on the new gtlds and looked at “Year Zero” for the new extensions. The report covered, looking back at 2014, the fee or free business model, the valuation proposition and where the new gtlds are heading. Read the full report here

From the report:

2014 ended with 470 gTLDs (generic top-level domains) in the root, including 39 using non-Latin characters, and 290 ccTLDs (country code top-level domains) of which 41 used  non-Latin characters. In all, there were no less than 760 TLDs in the root as at December 31, 2014, or an increase of 89% compared with 2013, and of 147% compared with 2012, the increase mainly being due to the new TLDs.

These figures prove by themselves that the domain name system has radically changed in a few months, more than during the first twenty years of its existence. The number of files still being processed by ICANN suggests that the phenomenon will continue in 2015 and 2016 to reach around 1,350 TLDs by the end of 2016.

2015 forecasts indicate a trend line of 8-10 million domain names under the nTLDs

If we extend the trend line observed in 2014 through to year-end 2015, we see that the goal at the end of that year is slightly over 8 million domain names, i.e. doubling in twelve months, all other things being equal.