Czech Internet Users Reject Own IDNs
While most countries and ссTLDs are positive about introducing national domains, Czech public has voted against their own national IDN, according to research held by Markent for CZ.NIC, registry for .cz.
Czech internet public rejected the introduction of diacritics in the .CZ ccTLD in the fourth time in a row. The survey results are of great importance for CZ.NIC in terms of accepting or refusing IDN in domains with .cz suffix. The reasons for users to be negative are, particularly, complicated access for foreign visitors and unwillingness to get adapted to changes.
“The repeated refusal of IDN was not a surprise. The last three surveys had very similar results and there have been no signs over the last two years pointing towards a change in this trend. Quite the opposite – in the long term, the negative attitude of the Czech Internet public toward IDN is growing,” said Ondřej Filip, Executive Director of the CZ.NIC association.
The typical supporters of the new initiative are women over 50 years of age and non-profit organizations: those who are less familiar with English are positive about introducing diacritics to the national domain, the survey says.
.CO Breaks The 600,000 Mark
.CO registry organization has recently announced 600,000 registered domains. Although the domain is relatively new and ages only several months, it has been mostly popular since then, hitting the 500,000 registered domain names in September, and acquiring another 100,000 in two months.
The registry plans to hold the private auction for several premium domain names – i.e. I.CO and other single-letter domains – in the following months.
.CN Halves The Number Of Domains
The number of registered domain name decreased greatly – from more than 13 million to 6 million. A 50 percent decline is the result of China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology conducting a complete inventory of all domains registered in .cn zone.
Zhang Xiangdong, CEO of net.cn, one of the largest Chinese registrars, blames the decline on rigid regulation and the cancellation of the program that provided CN domain name registration for the cost of 1 yuan. However, Zhang notes that the move, decreasing the number of net.cn users, has resulted in increasing market share. Zhang also thinks that this initiative took its toll on cybersquatters and helped to get rid of the ineffective domain names.
China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) launched an activity that allowed domain registration of a CN domain for a symbolic price of 1 yuan in 2007. The number of .cn domain names exceeded the number of .com domain names in that very same year and topped 10 million in Februaryof 2008. By the end of 2009, .cn has reached 13.7 million registered domain names.
