64,000 Australian businesses own more than 10 domain names each, but collectively own and control nearly one million of Australia’s best and most sought-after domain names.
Many people say that if you own 10 or more domain names, you’re a “Domain Investor“.
These 64,000 businesses are made up of massive corporations, as well as small-to-medium businesses, including companies like ANZ Bank, Apple Computers, CarSales.com.au(,) RealEstate.com.au(,) many law firms, many medical practices, etc… But in short, ALL of these companies can be classified as “Domain Investors”, because they have “invested” in a number of domain names (aka “digital assets”) to protect their online brands.
When you consider that auDA (.AU Domain Administration) have created a third-party “panel group” called The PRP (Policy Review Panel) to come up with creating the new rules to implement Direct .AU Registrations (eg- RealEstate.au), you would think it would also be a good idea to ensure everyone knows exactly what they’re getting into.
So let’s look at how this is all progressing…
64,000 “Domain Investors” own 995,795 of the existing .com.au domain names, out of the total 2,821,947 .com.au Australian domain names in existence.
This means, we can say “Domain Investors” collectively own around 35% of ALL Australian domain names in existence today.
These businesses and corporations who own 35% of ALL the .com.au DOMAIN NAMES are a LARGE CHUNK of Aussie businesses who own Australian domain names, you would surely have to say?
But here’s a big question…
How many of these businesses and corporations know that auDA are about to vote at a board level on The PRP’s “penultimate” recommendations for Direct .AU Registrations and understand this decision is going to completely DISRUPT the past few decades of their marketing and branding efforts going forward?
Our guess is… NOT MANY.
Less than 2 weeks ago, auDA published a blog on their website from The PRP asking for all “Domain Investors” to attend a “focus group session” to voice their opinions on how Direct .AU Registrations will be implemented.
Out of 64,000 “Domain Investors”, only 2 businesses showed up.
TWO.
There’s only one way to find out what all these businesses REALLY think about Direct .AU Registrations, as well as the new crazy “RESALE and WAREHOUSING” backward-rollback policy being thrown-around as an option in the new PRP Consultation Paper…
… and that’s to ASK all 64,000 “Domain Investors” what they really think about all this …
… and if auDA won’t reach out to them all individually …
… perhaps it’s time that WE do it ourselves.
*** The PRP consultation paper certainly impacts a large variety of stakeholders, and yet, those they’ve identified as the target group to be impacted are seemingly quarantined by the PRP as if they’re an infectious diseased that will corrupt their own biased viewpoint. The PRP offers absolutely no real evidence to support their belief of sterilizing the namespace through highly restrictive policy recommendations that appear to be nothing but fixed opinions based on indwelt resentment toward aftermarket participants, instead of, evidenced based policy built on objective data. ***
The PRP must provide the industry with a comprehensive feasibility study containing real evidence (not fixed opinions) to support their policy objectives. Also, it needs to be properly scrutinized, evaluated, and open for public debate and inspection, and not confined to backdoor group mind echo-chambers.