The Go Daddy Group, Inc. (www.godaddy.com), parent company of the domain name registrar GoDaddy.com, announced on March 15 that in less than a year since entering the Secure Certificate market, it has grown to become the fourth largest group provider of Secure Certificates worldwide. Go Daddy's February 2005 sales were up over 237%, compared to April 2004. Go Daddy's market share growth was measured by Netcraft Ltd (www.netcraft.com), which is a respected authority on market share for hosting, encrypted transactions, e-commerce and more. In January 2004, Netcraft reported that Go Daddy had experienced the largest monthly gain in the number of issued Secure Certificates worldwide. In addition, Netcraft found that Go Daddy's growth in new certificates led the second fastest growing Certificate Authority by more than 60%.
Name Intelligence, Inc. (www.nameintelligence.com), innovators of the popular Whois.sc domain search technology, announced on March 14 that they will host a domain name industry event in May 2005, called the Domain Roundtable conference (www.domainroundtable.com). The conference will be held at the Sheraton Seattle Hotel, which is located in downtown Seattle, Washington, from 25 to 27 May. In addition to domain name industry conference sessions, there will be special keynotes and local networking events during the dates of the conference for interested parties.
LogicBoxes (www.logicboxes.com), a software and consultancy company specializing in solutions for ICANN-accredited registrars and web hosting companies, announced on March 10 that it has introduced software and consultancy services for the .in domain accredited registrars. LogicBoxes provides registrar solutions for a list of gTLDs like .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz, .name, which will now include the .in ccTLD. LogicBoxes has already assisted over 50% of the currently live .in registrars in obtaining their .in accreditation.
Madasafish.com (www.madasafish.com) announced on March 5 that it is offering all its customers a completely free domain name. Users of all Madasafish services can get a .co.uk, .org.uk or .me.uk domain name with absolutely no registration or hosting fees. The offer comes with unlimited e-mail addresses at the domain and a 20MB website.
Interchange Corporation (www.interchangeusa.com), a leading provider of local and national paid-search services, announced on March 7 that it has acquired the Local.com domain (www.local.com). The company paid $700,000 for the domain name. The Local.com site will be re-launched in the second half of 2005. The company plans to develop Local.com into a worldwide local-search brand, focusing initially in the U.S. and Europe.
The Web hosting provider Silicon House (www.siliconhouse.net), based in India, announced on February 21 that it was named a fully accredited registrar for the .in domain, joining six other companies recently appointed as .in registrars by the National Internet Exchange of India. The .in domain will be available for $15.50, while .co.in, .net.in, .org.in, .firm.in, .gen.in and .ind.in will be available for $6.99.
The domain registrar RegistryPro (www.registrypro.com), a subsidiary of the Web hosting provider Hostway (www.hostway.com) and exclusive operator of the .pro domain, announced on February 18 that in preparation for the launch of the .eng.pro domain, it has revealed the first fifteen engineers to register .eng.pro, a domain for professional engineers. During Engineers Week in the US, which takes place February 20-26, 2005, the .eng.pro domain will officially open to the engineering community. The offical release date is February 21.
Netcraft (http://news.netcraft.com) announced on January 31 that the search engine giant Google (www.google.com) has now officially become an ICANN-accredited domain name registrar. Google is approved to sell names in seven top-level domains (TLDs) including .com, .net, .org, .biz., info, .name and .pro.
Tucows Inc. (www.tucowsinc.com), the largest ICANN-accredited wholesale domain name registrar, announced on January 27 that it will host a conference call on Thursday, February 10, 2005, to discuss its fourth quarter fiscal 2004 financial results. Participants can access the conference call via the Internet at www.tucowsinc.com by clicking on "Investor Relations."
VeriSign, Inc. (www.verisign.com), a leading provider of intelligent infrastructure services for Internet and telecommunications networks, announced on January 19 that it has submitted a formal proposal to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (www.icann.org) to retain the administration and operation of the .net Top-Level Domain (TLD). VeriSign's proposal is supported by an outstanding record of providing 100 percent availability of .net TLD resolution services and 100 percent zone file accuracy over the last seven years, as well as an investment of more than $150 million into building a world-class Internet infrastructure that reliably handles more than 4 billion .net Domain Name System (DNS) queries each day.
