On 24/09/2020 20:32, mail@christopherwilkinson.eu CW wrote:
Thankyou, Evin: In general, my earlier input has been taken into account. However, under. CCT Recommendations, the fifth bullet is far too weak:
. Make a decision about competition objectives, and therefore, required metrics (¿?)
Well, No. Competition is already ICANN's responsibility, and was the primary
justification for the CCT Review in the first place.
1. This should be the first bullet.
2. Delete 'Take a decision'. I trust that the decision has already been taken.
3. Proposed competition metrics:
- Evolution of market shares: Legacy, ccTLDs, new 2012 entrants, by region and by year 1998-2019.
Apologies for the late reply. Ironically, I was busy working on domain name and usage statistics and missed the meeting. With point 3 above, a lot of the data on market shares is highly fragmented due to ccTLD registries publishing little or partial registration statistics until quite recently. The 2000s round of new gTLDs had requirements that the registry reports would include statistics on country level registrations and a few of these old reports still exist. The requirement was dropped along the way and there is no registrations by country breakdown in current registry reports. Some of the new gTLDs (2012 round) have developed their own geography of registrations and a few of the NGTs have become pseudo-ccTLDs. There has also been a major problem with demand. The demand for the 2012 NGTs might have been there prior to 2008 but after large-scale Domain Tasting ended, much of that demand effectively disappeared. Many NGTs are struggling to get a few thousand new registrations per month. Renewal rates in some of the NGTs are not good. This has lead to some registries indulging in discounting to drive registrations. Discounting is like crack cocaine for registries in that it is highly addictive, difficult to stop using and quite destructive. Once a gTLD starts to use massive discounting, it destroys the credibility of the gTLD, drives out good registrations and kills development. On a country basis, the legacy gTLDs are in trouble. Outside .COM, they are surviving on the renewal of brand protection registrations. The market in countries with a strong ccTLD is typically over 80% .ccTLD/.COM and even .COM is struggling against the local ccTLDs. It maintains its market position because it is still the top global TLD and it has market awareness. But ccTLD growth has generally outstripped gTLD growth (legacy and new) in most markets. This is a market shift. With new markets, people are looking to sell globally. With mature markets people sell more locally and there's nothing quite as local as the local ccTLD. The regional issue is a major problem for ICANN and or the gTLDs. The number of registrars in the continent of Africa is extremely low. The number of registrars in Latin America is also low but it has one of the strongest ccTLDs (.BR) in North and South America. ICANN's registry/registrar model was adequate for the late 1990s but it is completely broken for the 2020s. The number of US registrars, according to the May 2020 ICANN reports is 1,931. The second place goes to China with 63. The majority of ICANN registars are drop catchers. They exist only to register deleting domain names and are not retail registrars. (The table for the breakdowns by country/COM/NET/ORG/BIZ/INFO/MOBI/ASIA are on the front page of HosterStats.) This is what the top 10 countries by gTLDs looks like: Place - Country - Registrars - AMBIONIC - COM - NET - ORG - BIZ - INFO - - MOBI -ASIA 1 United States 1,931 115,344,679 96,254,119 7,980,423 7,120,955 780,752 2,870,507 256,022 81,901 2 China 63 16,164,053 14,737,181 1,089,888 169,985 35,989 36,189 49,594 45,227 3 Germany 20 10,702,418 7,876,179 1,135,195 871,438 165,140 604,423 29,441 20,602 4 Canada 17 10,351,574 8,634,615 802,159 664,688 83,773 147,261 13,615 5,463 5 India 60 4,553,671 3,832,946 309,943 287,343 49,457 58,859 6,815 8,308 6 Japan 15 3,929,366 2,922,285 516,577 125,096 160,395 185,236 8,749 11,028 7 France 16 3,508,658 2,649,808 360,933 293,906 64,387 122,975 11,386 5,263 8 United Kingdom 21 2,634,699 2,052,407 234,152 192,976 44,067 99,922 6,827 4,348 9 Hong Kong 53 1,732,305 1,605,868 65,757 1,987 56,910 682 77 1,024 10 Spain 13 1,482,705 1,189,114 133,519 99,738 13,342 41,188 4,882 922
- Indicators of industry concentration and its evolution: by Registries, by Registrars, by RSPs, by portfolio investors.
On the domain name registrations side of the industry, it is massively concentrated. One of the portfolio and reseller statistics reports that I was working on shows that Godaddy's main registrars and hosters portfolio has 25.22% of the .COM market. It also has smaller portfolios which focus on PPC, brand protection and ccTLD markets. Endurance International Group is in second place with 5.44%. The market concentration is staggering. Approximately 94% of the AMBIONIC (Asia/Mobi/Biz/Org/Net/Info/Com) market is on just 1.29% operators (registrars/resellers/hosters). Of the hosters in that market, 650,340 are one hit wonders in that they only host one domain name (typically their own). This is often due to automated control panel setup for domain names. The registrations by registrars metric is obsolete and completely unreliable. There has been a wave of acquistions that have seen registrars and hosters change hands. Some of the larger portfolio operators have webhosters which act as resellers and it is not unusual to see some of the top ten positions in various country level markets being occupied by the registrars and resellers of various portfolio operators. This often the portfolio operator's registrars and hosters competing with themselves. The line between registrars and resellers has also become somewhat blurred due to the common ownership of registrars and resellers by portfolio operators. While the gTLD market can be described by registrar market share, there is not a one to one registar to reseller mapping and some resellers (not owned by the portfolio operators) will have registrations from multiple registrars for historical reasons. Even the Registrars/Resellers model has some complexity because many resellers are not "resellers". There are different types of hosters. Some of these are small businesses hosting their own domain names and they are not really resellers as such. They are often brand protection registrations in that they businesses protecting their own brands. At ICANN level, small businesses don't really appear because the IP constituency is focused on trademark and other IP rights. The bulk of brand protection registrations are small businesses, often without any registered trademarks or service markets protecting their own brand across the "must register" TLDs. The next layer is made up of web developers. They host the domain names of their clients and develop websites for them but they are not primarily in the business of domain name registrations. Some of them can have a few thousand registrations. They may evolve into domain name registration/hosting businesses. Once a hosting business has enough registrations, it may make the leap from being a hoster to being a registrar. With gTLDs, that generally meant becoming an accredited ICANN registrar. As country level mrkets have become increasingly dominated by their local ccTLDs in the last fifteen years, hosters are more likely to become ccTLD registrars for their local ccTLD rather than ICANN registrars. This shift was caused primarily by ICANN's failure to take action against large-scale Domain Tasting in the mid 2000s. People (including some of those that ALAC is meant to represent) found they could no longer get the domain name they wanted in .COM but could in their local ccTLD. Since then, the ccTLD has replaced .COM as the first choice TLD in most countries. The US market is the powerhouse of .COM and the legacy gTLDs. If it ever shifts towards .US ccTLD, then the legacy gTLDs will be in serious trouble. When it comes to portfolio registrations and domain name investment, the percentage of these registations in most gTLDs is much smaller than people expect. This because people don't typically rely upon statistical data. As a group, the "for sale" domain names in a TLD have a high non-renewal rate. The auctions and resale part of the market has a few large players but there is a blurring of the lines between registars that park expired domain names on PPC with a "may be for sale" notice and genuine auction/sales operations. One of the larger auction/sales operations has 1.35% of the .COM market. Contrary to the purist view, having auction/sales sites in a TLD is an indication of the health of a TLD. While it is a source of friction, it shows which TLDs that end users are in adopting. The NGTs have been a bit of a disaster in terms of secondary market sales.
- Effects of vertical integration on industry concentration. Compare degree of concentration in each of the Regions.
Concentration by region is also problematic due to ICANN's broken registrars model. The top of the market is dominated by portfolio operators that operate in mutiple country/regional markets (Transnationals like Godaddy, EIG, United Internet, CentralNic etc). One of Godaddy's acquisitions was the Host Europe Group and that operator had been buying up hosting businesses and registrars throughout the European market. Other players like United Internet and CentralNic had also been acquiring smaller players. When it comes to regions like Latin America/Carribean or Africa, they may not even move the needle when it comes to ICANN registrar marketshare but some of the countries will have their own thriving ccTLD markets. The markets in Africa seem to have skipped much of the Desktop Internet phase of development and moved instead to the Mobile Internet phase. It also means that many gTLD registrations will be hosted outside the registrant's country. This is often a function of economics and infrastructure development.
- effects of new IDN Registries on market shares in the relevant language areas.
IDNs seemed to be a good solution but their uptake has not, even in the Chinese market, been spectacular or on anything like the scale that their proponents expected. What is interesting is that there has been a trend to use numbers in registrations in the Chinese market as the pronounciation of the numbers will be phonetically similar to that of various words. One of the big problems with the CCT was that many of the metrics suggestions were from people who were unaware how difficult it was to get data for these metrics. ICANN's Domain Name Marketplace Indicators group has been working on developing usable metrics and it might be better to look at some of this work rather than indulging in a Golgafrincham-like effort on what colour to paint the wheels on the next round of new gTLDs. Regards...jmcc -- ********************************************************** John McCormac * e-mail: jmcc@hosterstats.com MC2 * web: http://www.hosterstats.com/ 22 Viewmount * Domain Registrations Statistics Waterford * Domnomics - the business of domain names Ireland * https://amzn.to/2OPtEIO IE * Skype: hosterstats.com **********************************************************