Neustar to acquire ccTLD .CO, Afternic’s sells 2.1 million and QY.com


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Neustar to acquire ccTLD .CO, Afternic’s sells 2.1 million and QY.com

 

Afternic’s big week

Last week was big for Afternic and Godaddy racking up 2.1 million in sales to include names such as QY.com for $100,000. Afternic was purchased by Godaddy not long ago to beef up it’s aftermarket sales and make a more seemless purchasing experience, noted Godaddy CEO Blake Irving, ““GoDaddy is working to bring the ‘domain aftermarket’ together with new registrations and make both super-simple to access,” noted GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving in a statement. “Our customers need an easy way to buy the name they want, regardless of whether it’s new or has been registered previously. This acquisition forms a registrar-led process that creates faster and more trusted transactions across the board.”

.Com still king

Despite the launch of new gTLD’s such as .guru (the most popular with 46,012 registrations so far), .berlin (40,328), .photography (29,221) and many others .com still surpasses with a recent announcement by Verisign that registrations have now exceeded the 113 million mark. Showing time again .com is king focus has recently been shifted to the new gTLD’s but speculators in the industry note this has happened before with the launch of other TLD’s such as .mobi or .co, regardless with companies being given so many alternatives it’s inevitable that .com will take a hit in the aftermarket and in registrations.

Neustar acquiring.co

Speaking of CCTLD’s, the popular extension .CO will be acquired for $109 million by Neustar a company I personally worked for, Neustar and the folks at .CO Internet S.A.S. the company that runs the CCTLD from Colombia have had a long time relationship dating back to it’s initial launch when I recall a signed agreement coming through the fax for Neustar to manage a portion of their infrastructure. The CCTLD has grown to more than 1.6 million registrations in over 200 countries worldwide. Stated Lisa Hook the president of Neustar, “The acquisition of .CO Internet is a natural fit for us given our successful partnership over the past four years and our domain name expertise. By combining .CO Internet’s innovative domain marketing capabilities with Neustar’s distribution network and technical resources, we will be able to broaden our registry services and the .co brand worldwide, while creating shareholder value.” The deal is yet to close but expected to do so within the month as of this writing, the originators will be kept on full time to run the ccTLD from their offices in Bogota, Colombia.

(The writer  of this article John Daly has over seven years in the domain industry as a broker with sales of names such as Custody.com, Filesharing.com and Villa.com, you can contact him through this website NameConnect.com)