The Dutch company Freenom, also known as OpenTLD, is finally leaving the domains business. Reports of this first appeared a month ago, and now there is strong confirmation. For many years, the company ran an extremely successful business by offering domains for free in several ccTLDs it managed. The secret of its success was that domains were not deleted, even if they the registrations were suspended for abuse or expired. Advertising links were placed on the parking pages of such domains, which brought significant income to the company, given the fact that there were millions of such domains.
But Freenom’s golden age came to an end when the fight against domain abuse became a matter of honor for large companies and national governments. Almost every country that had previously entrusted it with running their ccTLDs waived Freenom’s services. And the knockout blow was a lawsuit filed by Meta (recognized as an extremist organization in the Russian Federation). It demanded $500 million for 5,000 domain names registered in the domain zones managed by Freenom and that violated the rights of Meta brands.
However, the case never made it to court: Freenom and Meta reached a settlement, according to which Freenom agreed to pay Meta an undisclosed amount of compensation and leave the domains business. The issue of compensation is confidential, but leaving the business can be confirmed from independent sources. Thus, Domain Incite, citing Netcraft, reports that at least 12.6 million domains in the ccTLDs of Tokelau .TK, Central African Republic .CF and Equatorial Guinea .GQ have stopped responding to web requests. These ccTLDs were managed by Freenom, and their registered names accounted for 98.7 percent of all responding domains run by the registry a month earlier.
