500.000 .no names registered

Norid (the Norwegian registry) had a head-up start this year. Yesterday the 500.000th .no domain name was registered. The domain name linge-compagniet.no was registered by the company with the same name. Of course the Norwegian registry is very pleased with this milestone.

The past few years, the .no extension has been doing great. In 1995 there were only 1.000 registered .no domain names. By September 2008, this number has risen to 400.000. So it took the .no extension only 2 more years to register 100.000 extra .no domain names. Half a million names can seem few, definitely in comparison with other extensions but if you keep in mind the strict conditions you need to meet to be able to register a .no domain name, this is quite a remarkable amount of registrations.

For instance, at the moment it is impossible for individuals to register a .no domain name, although the registry is looking into this matter and considering to allow this in the future. Moreover, it is also very hard for a foreign company to register a .no domain name. You need to have a Norwegian company to be able to do so. Each Norwegian company can also only register a maximum of 20 domain names. However if you pay an extra fee you can use so called ‘local presence’ which makes it possible for individuals and foreign companies to register a .no domain name.