.Info reaches the half-million milestone
Published: 25 Oct 2001 12:23 BST
More than half a million customers have registered a .info domain name during the first 90 days of operation, according to Afilias, the official registry for the new global top level domain (gTLD).
The 500,000 milestone comes after Afilias received heavy criticism of its handling of the .info sunrise period this summer. The .com domain took more than five years to reach the same level of registrations.
"Everyone from mom-and-pop stores to Fortune 500 companies are registering their .info Web address," said Roland LaPlante, chief marketing officer of Afilias, said in statement. "The response has been absolutely global, as we had expected with this new unrestricted and intuitive domain."
The .info domain name is the first unrestricted top-level domain to be introduced since .com. During the sunrise period, which ran from 25 July to 27 August, owners of registered trademarks and service marks were able to officially register their marks in the .info domain, to prevent cybersquatting and provide time for the resolution of disputes over trademarks. But the sunrise period was branded an "abomination" by one director of the organisation. The director, Robert Connelly, resigned in protest less than a week before the formal registration of .info was opened to the general public.
The .info domain obtained more than 52,000 registrations during its sunrise period, and more than 300,000 registrations as part of its "start-up" or open registration which began on 12 September. Afilias opened the .info Internet address for real-time registration on 1 October.
People in more than 70 countries have registered for .info domains according to Afilias, with slightly more than half coming from Europe. Germany alone accounts for nearly 30 percent of registrations, and 40 percent come from North America. According to Domain Stats, the NetNames global domain name database, .info has received more registrations than most European country domains.
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