The domain name Check.me was at a Sedo auction with a reserve price of $2,500 back in 2010. Today according to to The Term Sheet, Check (f.k.a. Pageonce), a Palo Alto, Calif.–based mobile app for tracking and paying bills,  which used the domain name Check.me, raised $24 million in Series C funding. Menlo Ventures led the round, and was joined by return backers Morgenthaler Ventures and … [Read more...]

Afternic.com just released its reportable weekly domain sales report for the week of 8/26/13 – 9/1/13, total domain sales for the week, including confidential sales and sales under $1000, summed to $1,180,925. All sales were led by Name Administration, Inc sale of Philanthropist.com For $50K, tied for the highest sale of the week was the domain name Dentl.com. One of our domain names made … [Read more...]

Two separate WIPO panels upheld the objection of the Internet Giant Sina on two new gTLD applications both against the same applicant Tencent Holdings Limited of Shenzhen, China. The WIPO panels upheld Sina objection to the new gTLD applications .Weibo & On .微博 "The Panel notes that both Parties accept and claim that “weibo” is the pinyin equivalent (the phonetic transliteration of Chinese … [Read more...]

Melbourne IT chief executive Theo Hnarakis will step down by the end of year after more than a decade as CEO according to afr.com The move comes on the day that it appears hackers associated with the Syrian Electronic Army Group hackers gained access the New York Times and Twitter amongst others although Melbourne IT who hosted the websites domain names. However, the story did not mention … [Read more...]

In a comment posted on ICANN website concerning the new gTLD name collision report,  the Registries Stakeholder Group (RySG) issued a consensus statement that they support the letter submitted by the New gTLD Applicant Group (NTAG) asking ICANN to allow the 20% of new gTLD applications classified as  :Unknown Risk” In the Collision Report To Move Forward. The vote for the proposal by RySG has … [Read more...]

For the first time in the history of the Internet there are no more than 110,000,000 .com domain names registered according to Verisign. As of 8:36:10 AM UTC there are now over  110,024,017 active .com domain names registered. According to Verisign the registry of the .com and .net domain name extensions or Top Level Domains (TLD)  the number of active .com registrations passed the 110 … [Read more...]

The new gTLD Committee of ICANN just killed off Dotless Domains according to a resolution published last night. Google notified ICANN that it modified  its application to operate .Search new gTLD from a closed model to an open model operating it as a Dotless Domain. Here is the resolution: Whereas, dotless domains consist of a single label and require the inclusion of, for example, an A, … [Read more...]