new gtlds GoDaddy to drop support for all Uniregistry strings (permanently)

[GeorgeK]

According to @DomainNameWire:

Schilling informed me that GoDaddy will stop offering Uniregistry top level domain names. This isn’t the first time GoDaddy has dropped Uniregistry names, but it seems they now have put a permanent transition in place.

GoDaddy stopped offering new registrations of Uniregistry TLDs in March due to Uniregistry’s planned price hikes, but then added them back in with high prices. While new registrations are available as of today, this will soon be switched off.

http://domainnamewire.com/2017/08/18/godaddy-drops-uniregistry/

@Uniregistry (aka "Punyregistry") new gTLDs will no longer be supported by GoDaddy.

 

[Acroplex]

No one is waiting for those so-called "premium" domain names. I'm sure GoDaddy is losing no sleep over missing the opportunity to sell domains that few, if any, desire.

Zero cost to sell inventory that no-one can predict the sales volume. The same was said about Rightside, .CLUB and even the XXX Registry.

 

[Shimmy]

Tucows will not hassle with the code changes too.

https://onlinedomain.com/2017/05/26...tucows-stops-support-9-uniregistry-new-gtlds/

Registrars pay software staff to do more important things. Todd Han, founder and CEO of Dynadot, has even said so.

Tucows, Namecheap and Godaddy all deciding to dump them is the best thing that can happen to people that bought New G's. Since icann won't regulate price increases for them , this is pretty much industry self regulation . It's a message to other companies that run top level domains not to do ridiculous prices increases are they too will be dropped.

 

[Acroplex]

You don't see the big picture, and that's ok if that's what you want to believe. For those with a critical mind:

Tucows, Namecheap and GoDaddy dropped the ball with tweaking their archaic back-end software, to accommodate multi-tier pricing.

It's a business decision based on parameters that sit outside of claimed "customer confusion".

Uniregistry grandfathered all gTLDs that received sizable price increases. GoDaddy denied its customers the ability to register domains from May to September in Uniregistry gTLDs at current (lower) prices, thus no grandfathering took place. Instead, they hiked the prices immediately, making more money! SmartDaddy!

Meanwhile, Tucows/OpenSRS retracted its initial statements about "business disruption." Their business model is based on resellers, and they apparently decided that 6 months was not enough time to implement changes to existing "spaghetti code."

All 3 registrars are losing free money: they'd make hundreds of thousands of dollars from upselling Uniregistry products, with little investment (code changes) for a task that Uniregistry offered API support.

On the subject of price regulation by ICANN, I agree 100%. There needs to be a price-capping provision next time such registry contracts are renewed. Uniregistry took one for the team, and it didn't look good, but rest assured that any new gTLD registry would increase prices arbitrarily, if they could.

 

[mad409]

The few I have at GoDaddy.com are still grandfathered, .flowers is one I checked. GoDaddy does not have a direct contract with Uniregistry any longer but their sub provider will handle renewals through the GD platform.

As per new registrations it appears they are still accepting them but at crazy pricing, .flowers is $299.99. I assume this is being done through their sub provider, not sure.

When I spoke with GD a few days ago, before the press got out my renewals would stay grandfathered because it was handled through Uni so I shouldn't have an issue.

There is an issue for those who want privacy with these extensions, it's not an option now at GD.

 

[gpmgroup]

Uniregistry grandfathered all gTLDs that received sizable price increases.

Do you know if the domains are grandfathered or if the registrants are grandfathered?

 

[Acroplex]

Do you know if the domains are grandfathered or if the registrants are grandfathered?

The domains themselves are grandfathered, based on registration date - even if they get resold. That's the official statement I was given.

Of course, GoDaddy made its best effort to not disclose this between May-Now and to disable new registrations in all grandfatherable gTLDs; and raised prices well above the basic increase by Uniregistry immediately. Thanks, GoDaddy!

 

[GoKaizen]

Domain registrars hate registry exceptions

http://domainnamewire.com/2017/06/26/domain-registrars-hate-registry-exceptions/

 

[biggie]

my domain names are great-great-grandfathered



imo....

 

[Acroplex]

GoDaddy VP's statement is utterly incredulous:

"To avoid marketplace confusion, if a domain name is moving to a much higher price, GoDaddy will treat the names as the higher price. This makes the experience consistent for all customers."​

Consistency has nothing to do with this decision here.

It's inability, unwillingness, or a combination thereof, to code the damn processor that charges a fee based on a split point date!

Consider this: every registry has premium-priced domains. That means a coding process that sits outside of the "consistent" pricing model takes these domains and charges accordingly when they are bought or renewed.

 

[gpmgroup]

Perhaps the subsequently enforced grandfathering means the original (possible) projected increase in income for the registry will no longer materialise and any financial issues may even worsen when new registrations all but dry up in a couple of weeks. If the situation is as unviable as Frank initially indicated then perhaps it’s not worth coding differential pricing for the period before there is even greater upheaval?

 

[Acroplex]

Perhaps the subsequently enforced grandfathering means the original (possible) projected increase in income for the registry will no longer materialise and any financial issues may even worsen when new registrations all but dry up in a couple of weeks. If the situation is as unviable as Frank initially indicated then perhaps it’s not worth coding differential pricing for the period before there is even greater upheaval?

Good question.

I listened to the DNW podcast today, and nowhere did Frank mention the situation is unviable. He said GoDaddy going back and forth is related to their priorities as a registar: focusing on web hosting and other add-on services such as SSL.

GoDaddy has less than 20k domains in Uniregistry gTLDs, and clearly the decision to a) charge higher prices in every gTLD (even the grandfathered ones) and to b) drop the gTLD support completely is related to unwillingness/inability to code the two-tier pricing process on time.

I find hard to believe, that the world's biggest registrar does not want to allocate resources to elevate a piece of its code. If anything, the price increase model might occur elsewhere in the future, and they would be future-proof.

Overall, Frank was nice to GoDaddy during the podcast. I don't know what happened in the "trenches" but during this back and forth saga, GoDaddy acted publicly in a nonchalant manner about the pricing issue.

The bottom line: GoDaddy won't be supporting Uniregistry gTLDs, and that's ok with Uniregistry, although it would have been better if they worked things out. The domain industry is small and registrars/registries cross paths all the time. It's good not to burn bridges.

 

[Recons.Com]

@GeorgeK could it be because of Uniregistry aggressively targeting large GD clients with switching offers and promise to beat GD price?

 

[Brandworthy]

If GoDaddy and their gargantuan budget cannot implement changes fast enough, then there is a huge problem.

The bigger the ship the longer it takes to turn. When you work with companies this size you learn quickly that staying nimble at scale is one of the biggest challenges they face. Very often companies this size have their development funnel fully set for the upcoming 12-18 months, so assuming that large companies can make changes within 6 months isn't credible at all.

 

[platey]

When you own the extensions you can increase the prices

If registrars refuse to sell these extensions etc it will move market share to uniregistry

The more gtlds uniregistry goes on to buy and other registrars choose not to sell uniregistry will continue to get two pieces of the pie with every one sale of the gtlds that they sell via their registrar which is taking market share from gd over time

 

[Kate]

If GoDaddy and their gargantuan budget cannot implement changes fast enough, then there is a huge problem.

I am wondering, do their system even handle differential pricing seamlessly ?
I am not sure there is a gargantuan budget for IT, in fact I suspect that the backend is quite old, and bloated like everything at GoDaddy, and that only the UI gets some cosmetic work from time to time. Software seldom ages well, because you never rewrite it from scratch. Instead, you keep adding new 'features' and additional layers and appendices, and you end up with an unstable pile of dung. But adding new features come at a cost because of the growing complexity and instability (technical debt). Speaking from experience here
If this depicts the situation at Godaddy, then they will predictably not want to carry low-volume extensions that require 'customization' because there isn't enough enough volume to make it worthwhile.

And keep in mind they are the biggest registrar with tens of millions of domains under management today. IT systems do not always scale up gracefully.
This could be one reason, of course no company likes to admit that their 20-year old backend is buggy, inadequate, outdated and inflexible.

 

[Acroplex]

The bigger the ship the longer it takes to turn. When you work with companies this size you learn quickly that staying nimble at scale is one of the biggest challenges they face. Very often companies this size have their development funnel fully set for the upcoming 12-18 months, so assuming that large companies can make changes within 6 months isn't credible at all.

Since the days that I churned code non stop, development cycles have changed. Rapid cycles are the norm for the past decade plus, or you won't make it in this app-driven world. To say that it'd take a full year for a task of this kind, is absurd. I do take GD's size into account, and given the financial prowess and talent they can utilize with it, I'm calling the lack of execution an executive, strategic decision. "Customer confusion" is the least tangible reason IMO.

 

[Brandworthy]

To say that it'd take a full year for a task of this kind, is absurd.

I never said that. I said that big companies don't usually leave their dev resources sitting around waiting for a project like this to come along. It's a simple matter of priorities - I'm sure they could do this if whey absolutely needed to by shuffling resources, but who are we to assume what their business priorities are? How can we possible presume to know that the lack of implementation is purely a competitive response? Right now they have an auctions platform that barely works on mobile devices. Their Afternic platform has the most offensive frontend imaginable, and the backend has had some serious security issues. They have retired major iOS and Android apps with no replacements. I imagine their development pipeline is fairly full of projects that have better prospects than support over-priced new gTLDs, but as I mentioned - who knows?

 

[Acroplex]

Unwillingness/incompetence are both plausible scenarios. One has to be enthusiastic about something, and if the core relationship won't sustain that, it becomes an unnecessary chore. But is this truly for the consumer's benefit as claimed?

My criticism of GoDaddy is on this incident alone. I've used them since 2000 and still have domains there. Despite what some want to believe, I'm objective - yet brutally honest, when things don't work as expected.

 

[Name Trader]

I agree with @Acroplex that "customer confusion" seems the least likely of all the possible scenarios there might be for dropping all Uniregistry GTLDs. In fact I'd go as far as to say that GoDaddy have inflicted much of this "customer confusion" themselves with the way they have handled these price increases themselves. It seems more like "management confusion". I think GD should come clean and tell us exactly why they are taking their actions against Uniregistry. But don't hold your breath.

Uniregistry were perfectly entitled to handle the increases as they have done, under their ICANN agreement. Their biggest problem seems to be that they have a whole bunch of unviable GTLDs to begin with. Even those customers with grandfathered prices will eventually be screwed, when their GTLD still is unviable selling domains at these new prices. Eventually they will be asked to pay these higher prices sometime down the road, either by Uniregistry, or whoever they persuade to take over the GTLD (which nobody in their right mind wants to buy a toxic GTLD). Or the GTLD will simply fail. If I owned a grandfathered domain, I'd be looking for an alternative, to protect my long-term business interests.

GoDaddy et al, are also perfectly entitled to sell whatever GTLD's they feel comfortable selling. The two tiered pricing might be simple or complex to implement. I'm sure GoDaddy could have easily implemented this pricing structure within the given time-frame. If they had wanted to. But I suspect they took the decision not to implement the two-tiered pricing structure as an excuse to cut the umbilical chord of selling a set of failing GTLDs.

GoDaddy pride themselves for selling domains at affordable prices to endusers. I don't think selling domains at Uniregistry prices could be called affordable prices. I completely understand and agree with the decision they have made about this. Uniregistry are trying to sell (mostly) third rate GTLDs at (mostly) super-premium prices. This strategy will fail. IMHO.

Frank will inherit whatever premium domains get dropped. It's a win-win situation for both of them

 

[Acroplex]

@stub gave a very well-balanced analysis. It shows that even large companies such as GoDaddy throw "tantrums" and severe ties when feeling threatened by even smaller competitors.

 

[equity78]

I am wondering, do their system even handle differential pricing seamlessly ?
I am not sure there is a gargantuan budget for IT, in fact I suspect that the backend is quite old, and bloated like everything at GoDaddy, and that only the UI gets some cosmetic work from time to time. Software seldom ages well, because you never rewrite it from scratch. Instead, you keep adding new 'features' and additional layers and appendices, and you end up with an unstable pile of dung. But adding new features come at a cost because of the growing complexity and instability (technical debt). Speaking from experience here
If this depicts the situation at Godaddy, then they will predictably not want to carry low-volume extensions that require 'customization' because there isn't enough enough volume to make it worthwhile.

And keep in mind they are the biggest registrar with tens of millions of domains under management today. IT systems do not always scale up gracefully.
This could be one reason, of course no company likes to admit that their 20-year old backend is buggy, inadequate, outdated and inflexible.

Spot on.

 

[Kate]

One thing that we know, is that Godaddy has been acting in bad faith on the occasion.
For example, years ago they were advising against .tv because the island is 'sinking', at the same time they were pimping .me while the host country doesn't have an established history of stability.

However, I think they might seriously dislike the differential pricing which is a PR headache, because registrants never deal with the registry direct, it's always the registrar that will have to deal with complaints about price hikes etc.

Since there are no price caps, grandfathered pricing is not a right but a 'favor' that could be revoked in the future. If registrants knew they enjoy zero protection, then they would shun nTLDs even more. In my view, the lack of predictable, regulated pricing is reason enough to avoid nTLDs.
And maybe Godaddy is seeing the writing on the wall: many of those strings are not viable.

 

[Acroplex]

The strings might or might no be viable in the next 20 years. Nobody knows. But GoDaddy's role in this exchange is simply the retailer, not the manufacturer. They don't hold inventory, they sell - and greatly upsell - products other Registries "create." So no, this decision was a tantrum and an indication of how GoDaddy operates at the corporate level as well.

 

[Name Trader]

@Acroplex - I wouldn't exactly call it a tantrum. As I explained above, it could have been a well thought out, or a not so well thought out, corporate strategy.

@Kate - It is true, that all these nGTLDs can increase their prices overnight (well over 6 months) to whatever they see fit to charge, and could even grandfather in all currently registered domains. A PR disaster, if they don't. It's a risk, that probably very few registrants even thought about at the time of registration. Their only safeguard is the track-record of each nGTLD. Which none of them currently have a sufficiently long track record.

The only possibility is Verisign, who owns .com, if they were to assign a similar operation to .web. The problem is that they (would say, they) have been hampered by the contract they had to sign to get .com (which many say is already too generous to Verisign). It's still a wait 'n see situation until .web overcomes all the litigation and eventually comes out. But without a clear statement from Verisign, there would be no good reason to trust that the same couldn't happen to .web. All these nGTLDs are a minefield of uncertainty. For which I blame ICANN. For a non-profit organization, they have certainly chased the almighty dollar. IMHO, they should be disbanded and replaced with a true non-profit organization. But realistically, that will never happen. But maybe all these nGTLDs could be managed by some other (non-profit) organization (but I'm getting off topic).

I'd rather stick with a regulated market model, such as the original GTLDs and ccGTLDs. Much easier to plan your future. Which is a necessity for businesses. Choose your nGTLD wisely.

 

[gpmgroup]

ICANN will just say you don't have to buy them if you don't want to... If enough people don't buy them then the registries will either have to drop their prices or go out of business.