Thanks, Ross. Where would your 'quick popular stats at our fingertips' research approach put the 'professional portfolio' holders of thousands or millions of names? Would they have been in the business sector or the individual sector? Marilyn Cade -----Original Message----- From: owner-gnso-dow123@icann.org [mailto:owner-gnso-dow123@icann.org] On Behalf Of Ross Rader Sent: Thursday, December 07, 2006 2:42 PM To: gnso-dow123@gnso.icann.org Cc: Council GNSO Subject: [gnso-dow123] Request for Data: Individual vs. Commercial Registration Today in the GAC/GNSO co-session, we heard a request for data about the number of gTLD registrations that are registered by commercial users versus those that are registered by individual users. Some quick work with Google shows that the ratio is roughly 7:3. "...70 percent of domain registrations were attributed to the business segment and the remaining 30 percent to consumers. Compared to a similar study in 2005, the role of the consumer segment has increased from 25%. Registrars in the United States had a slightly higher percentage of business from the consumer segment than the international registrars, 30 percent and 27 percent respectively." - Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief, November 2006. While I am certain that these numbers vary slightly from gTLD to gTLD, I think its fair to assume for our purposes that the ratio is similar, and that we can expect to see continued growth from the consumer segment in the coming years. Ross Rader Tucows 416.538.5492