New quarterly https://www.verisign.com/assets/domain-name-report-sept2016.pdf Domain Name Industry Brief was published by Verisign. It covers data from April to June of the year. According to it, the number of registered domains in the global network by the end of the second quarter amounted to about 334.6 million, 8 million more than in the first quarter (2.4 percent growth). In comparison with the same period last year there was an increase of 38.2 million names or 12.9 percent.
Domain Incite compared these data to Verisign’s previous reports and stated that the highest contribution to the growth in the number of registrations in the Q2 were registrations in the new gTLDs. From approximately 8 million new registered names about 5.9 million were registered in the new gTLDs. To compare: both domains .COM and .NET managed by Verisign grew only by 700 thousand names. The number of registrations in .NET decreased by approximately 100 thousand – the first such drop since Q1 of 2015. It is unlikely this data means there is a serious threat to Verisign’s place from the new domains. However, it’s interesting that the company decided not to draw attention to these tendencies in its report.
