Items tagged with domain
The world's first-ever dot-com celebrates its thirtieth birthday tomorrow, and to celebrate, it's gone offline! To be fair, that could be due to the fact that it's getting inundated with traffic, given everyone and their dog seems to be curious about what the oldest Web domain looks like. If you are able to access it, at https://www.symbolics.com/, what you'll find is a cutesy town that acts as a bit of a Web archive. Meanwhile, the company that originally owned the domain has moved to symbolics-dks.com, where it looks the exact same as it has for many years. Symbolic.com's old look The story of the original domain is interesting, and not just because it's kind of symbolic for being the first...
Read more...
GoDaddy, the world's largest domain name registrar with 14 facilities spread across the world, is reportedly planning an initial public offering (IPO) next year and is seeking a valuation of $4.5 billion. The paperwork for the IPO was filed by GoDaddy Chief Financial Officers (CFO) Scot Wagner back in June, and he met with analysts a week ago to provide an update.According to a report in the New York Post, GoDaddy is backed by buyout bigwigs KKR and Silver Lake, the latter of which is the same one that helped Michael Dell buy back the computer company he founded and take it private.Part of the reason why GoDaddy wants an IPO is because it will provide the company an opportunity to diversify and...
Read more...
A pair of publishing groups -- the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers -- are against Amazon's plans to take control of new top-level domain (TLD) names that recently became available. The publishing groups argue that giving Amazon access to addresses that end in ".book," ."author," and ".read" would be a threat to competition, The Wall Street Journal reports. Barnes & Noble also filed an objection with ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), stating that Amazon could use the Internet domain suffixes to effectively stifle competition. That sentiment was echoed by the Authors Guild. "Placing such generic domains in private hands is plainly anti-competitive,"...
Read more...
It's not often that we can use LOL in a story without throwing integrity out of the window, but leave it to Google to enable such a luxury. The search giant has just announced that it will be "expanding the Internet domain space." In 2008, ICANN announced a program to expand the number of generic TLDs (think .com, .org, .edu), developed through its bottom-up, multi-stakeholder process. Given that expansion, Google decided to submit applications for new TLDs, which generally fall into four categories: trademarks, like '.google,' domains related to our core business, like .docs, domains that will improve user experience, such as .youtube, which can increase the ease with which YouTube channels...
Read more...
Microsoft didn't waste any time swooping in and snatching up the domain name SkypeSexFinder.com after it became available, according to Whois records online. Fusible was first to discover the domain name registration and noted that it was redirecting visitors to its Bing search engine, though not Bing's homepage. Instead, it brings up Bing search results for SkypeSexFinder, which lists plenty of sultry links. It doesn't appear Microsoft is trying to assist sex starved Web surfers with a fetish for Skype chat, and it's far more likely the SkypeSexFinder.com domain grab was simply a preventative measure. If that's the case, Microsoft might be facing a losing battle because it can't possible lay...
Read more...
Domain registrar GoDaddy.com has been on the auction block since September of last year, and it appears the site has finally found a buyer willing to pay a high enough asking price. Actually, three buyers, including private equity-firms KKR & Co. and Silver Lake Partners, and private equity and venture capital firm Technology Crossover Ventures, the Wall Street Journal reports. Citing "people familiar with the matter," WSJ says the deal will go down for between $2 billion and $2.5 billion, with an official announcement potentially coming as early as next week. During its 14-year tenure on the Web, GoDaddy.com has grown into the world's largest registrar of domain names. The site also sells...
Read more...
Talk about Google Translate gaining a whole new level of importance. The Internet as we know has officially changed today. For well over a decade, every single URL registered through ICANN has used Latin numbers, letters and characters. Even foreign language sites have been forced to use characters found on a typical Western/U.S. keyboard in the URL. But in October of last year, ICANN (the Internet regulator over URL name registrations) decided that the barrier should be torn down, and non-Latin characters should be allowed in URL names. This week, the world's first domain name using all non-Latin characters went live, and it's an Arabic URL that is getting loads of clicks simply for being "first."...
Read more...
The domination of the Latin alphabet on the Internet is expected to come to an end this week.The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is meeting this week in Seoul, South Korea, and is all but sure to approve international domain names - i.e., domain names that can be written in alphabets other than the one English uses. ICANN is the "not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world ... [that] develops policy on the Internet’s unique identifiers." In other words, it's the closest thing the lawless Internet has to a governing body. Formed in 1998, ICANN coordinates the creation of ISPs and domains so that people can actually find what they're...
Read more...
Will Ymail lure you to Yahoo! Email? For that matter, will Rocketmail? Starting this morning, Yahoo! will be opening up ymail.com and rocketmail.com email domains for users. Why?It's obvious that if you wanted to get the email address john@yahoo.com, you couldn't. Saturation has meant that if you want to get an email address at Yahoo!, or for that matter, Gmail, you frequently have to resort to adding numbers or other such differentiating characters. What a pain, right?Today, Yahoo Inc. will roll out two new e-mail services - Rocketmail and Ymail - that the company hopes will start a "global race" among Internet users looking to ditch their high school and gimmicky e-mail addresses...
Read more...
McAfee has released its annual "Mapping the Mal Web" report, which reports on "the riskiest and safest places on the Web," after analyzing "9.9 million heavily trafficked Web sites" using its own McAfee Site Advisor technology. Topping the list of most dangerous domains is the .hk domain (Hong Kong); the safest domain is .fi (Finland). Ranked in order, the top five most dangerous country domains are: .hk (Hong Kong).cn (China).ph (Philippines).ro (Romania).ru (Russia)In order, the top safest are: .fi (Finland).jp (Japan).no (Norway).si (Slovenia).co (Columbia)In addition to country domains, McAfee found the .info domain to be the most dangerous generic domain--claiming that as much as 11.8 percent...
Read more...
In what can only be called ironic, or humorous, or maybe a slap in the face, infamous Swedish Bittorrent site The Pirate Bay has taken over a domain formerly owned by a recording industry group.In yet another snub to anti-piracy efforts, infamous Swedish BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay has taken over IFPI.com, a domain formerly owned by the recording industry group by the same name. IFPI, previously known as the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, pushes for anti-piracy enforcement in 75 countries.IFPI currently operatest IFPI.org. The Pirate Bay says it has legitimate uses in mind for the domain, promoting the International Federation of Pirates Interests. ...
Read more...
Spam, the other 4 letter swear word that starts with an S, might soon hit a bump in the road thanks to an initiative called DomainKeys Identification. "A key Internet standards body gave preliminary approval on Tuesday to a powerful technology designed to detect and block fake e-mail messages. It's called DomainKeys Identified Mail, and it promises to give Internet users the best chance so far of stanching the seemingly endless flow of fraudulent junk e-mail." While spammers and hackers alike have shown an uncanny ability to foil almost any obstacle(s) thrown in their way, DomainKeys ID might throw a wrench in their plans. Here's how it works:1) Mail servers running the DomainKeys ID technology...
Read more...
America Online has been making some BIG changes in the way they do business as of recent. AOL has previously announced that its services would be available to broadband users at no cost, and now AOL is giving the details on offering free personal e-mail domains. AOL has changed its business strategy to combat dwindling consumer interest, and intends to shift to a service more capable of competing with the likes of content juggernauts like Google and Yahoo. "Called My eAddress, the service enables someone to choose any email address they wish using the .com or .net domains. As a result, a person could set up separate addresses for communicating...
Read more...
