On December 16, Moscow hosted the Runet 2019: Results of the Year conference. This annual December conference was held for thirteenth time, organized by RAEC and industrial partners. The experts reviewed this year and laid out Runet’s development plans for the next year.
Several interesting research reports were presented at the conference. In addition to the traditional research, The Economy of Runet/the Ecosystem of the Russian Digital Economy 2019, was presented by RAEC, ROCIT and other companies where the participants were able to see ROCIT’s research on the Russian domain market carried out under Coordination Center for TLDs .RU/.РФ direction.
Coordination Center Director Andrey Vorobyev spoke about the 2019 results in the Russian domain industry. He noted that it was possible to change the downward trend in .RU and .РФ, and the domain zone was expected to grow next year.
“In fact, today almost no national domain zone is showing significant growth because of many external factors, like competition with social networks. Nevertheless, this year .РФ gives us reason for joy: on the eve of its 10th anniversary it has found a balance: 760,000 registered domains; and I’m sure that next year the number will increase. In addition, we have a lot of educational events and projects with developers and communities planned for 2020. We hope it will have a positive influence on the domain’s growth,” he added.
The Coordination Center’s Head of External Communications Mikhail Anisimov presented research on the use of .RU domain names carried out by ROCIT under Coordination Center direction.
“The research provides us with a clear picture of how domain names are used in .RU, which industries are most represented on the web and the degree of their digitalization. It turns out that car sales and repair companies are represented most widely while companies from traditional economy sectors such as heavy industry, construction, processing, and extraction have the least representation. It was unexpected that education was not better represented,” Mikhail Anisimov noted.
The research also showed which criteria companies used to choose domain names: first, the name of the company, then the company’s activity and often wordplay. However, most domains do not coincide with the company name (and probably with the trademark), which makes over 50 percent of companies vulnerable to having their domain names get recaptured.
The Coordination Center’s international activities were another subject. The Center’s Director Andrey Vorobyev and ICANN Global Stakeholder Engagement Manager for Eastern Europe and Central Asia Natalia Mochu spoke about the center’s involvement in international projects. Andrey Vorobyev said this year Russia hosted several large international events organized by the Coordination Center. For example, the Russian Internet Governance Forum RIGF 2019 took place on April 7, followed by the Asian Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum (APrIGF 2019) in Vladivostok in July, which is considered one of the most successful forums.
“At these forums, the Russian government’s position was expressed that the Russian internet is an essential part of the global internet. This statement was then raised to the regional level (APrIGF) and then global level (Global IGF). Today we continue to work to attract international events in Russia,” Andrey Vorobyev said.
In her speech, Natalia Mochu raised the topic of Universal Acceptance and noted the role the Russian and regional universal acceptance groups, established at the initiative the Coordination Center, played in this process. “We can see that this group is among the most active both at the regional and the global levels. We can see that they understand the problem very well and want to move towards introducing UA. UA issues are included in the ICANN strategy, and this group will receive comprehensive support from our organizations,” she said.
Experts of the Coordination Center and ICANN also discussed the secure and stable work of the internet and said that “technology cannot bring harm or benefit, but we must use it responsibly and consider the possible consequences for society.”
