The deal to sell Public Interest Registry (PIR), the registry managing the .ORG gTLD, will no doubt remain the top news item concerning domains in the near future. Lawyers, rights activists, technical specialists, and domain investors have been actively discussing the circumstances surrounding the deal, which may result in a price increase in the domain zone and create serious problems for a lot of registrants. At the same time, perhaps one of the most important questions goes unnoticed: why would the Internet Society (ISOC) want to sell PIR at all? ISOC founder Vint Cerf may have hinted at the real reason, and his hint seems quite pessimistic.
In the mailing list posting last week, Vint Cerf wrote: “The domain name business started in 1992. There is not assurance that it will go one indefinitely — something new will likely come along. It would be good for ISOC to be able to continue its work without specific dependence on a single TLD’s commercial viability.” Of course, nothing under the sun lasts forever, but this can hardly serve as a serious argument when making business plans. However, analysts believe Vint Cerf was referring to the development of new internet technologies, which may replace the domain system as it is today. Considering that Cerf created the TCP/IP protocol stack, chaired ICANN for a long time, is Google’s leading specialist on technology promotion and has the unofficial title of the “Father of the Internet,” it may be assumed that he knows more about internet development trends than most.
In this context, Domain Incite notes that the domain business has not been going very well lately. In recent years, any serious increases in domains were related to pricing promotions and marketing campaigns or anomalies, while the main trend is decreased activity. For example, the number of registrations in .ORG, one of the largest and most popular domains in the world, hit the lowest point since October 2014. In this situation, ISOC’s decision to sell PIR looks quite reasonable.
