CentralnicFor about two decades CentralNic has been known as the registry operator of alternative extensions like .eu.com, .gb.net or uk.net. Since the launch of the new gTLD’s, CentralNic jumped also on that bandwagon and now is one of the larger back-end providers for such new gTLD’s. Apparently they have decided to focus only on the more lucrative extensions and they will be sunsetting 8 of their less popular SLD’s: .AR.COM, .GB.COM, .HU.COM, .KR.COM, .QC.COM, .NO.COM, .SE.COM, and .UY.COM.

In practice, all websites or e-mail addresses ending in these extensions will stop working from April 30’th 2017 onwards. Owners of such a domain name are advised to move their website and e-mail as soon as possible. CentralNic is offering free registrations under some of their remaining extensions as compensation, but question is how much people will still trust the “alternative” domain names, seeing that a commercial company like CentralNic can simply decide to no longer facilitate them at any time. People who now are forced to move their website and e-mail to an other address, will very likely not be trusting alternative extensions in the future.

CentralNic however will probably make a nice one-time profit from being able to sell those two-letter .com-names once all subdomains have been removed. Even in the current day and age of lots of new gTLD’s, a short .com domain name is still extremely valuable. Not too long ago, 37.com has been sold for 2,1 million USD and 533.com for over 400.000 USD. An auction for 27.com is ongoing with expected closing price to also be a 7-figure number.

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