Today let’s look back to assess the impact of ICANN’s Round 1 New gTLD Program on global domain name counts. In 2012 before the New gTLD program launched there were approximately 250M domain names with growth of 8% globally. Over the past 10 years global domain volume has continued to grow to over 350M domains with growth slowing in recent years. In 2022, New gTLDs grew 11% to 27M; ccTLDs grew at 5% to 133M; Other gTLDs shrunk slightly to 16M and -0.7%; and .com was almost flat at 160.5M and 0.3% growth. The data was collected from the Domain Name Industry Brief at www.dnib.com and DNIB noted that 5 ccTLDs were from the data in from 2021 on due to uncertainty in their numbers.

In 2012 there was significant uncertainty as to how ICANN’s New gTLD program would impact existing TLDs. This was to be the biggest expansion of the namespace since the creation of the Internet. There were three basic scenarios for how the New gTLDs could impact the existing .com, .net, other gTLDs and ccTLDs domain volumes.

1. No Impact – the New gTLDs are duds and do not gain significant traction

2. New Demand – the New gTLDs are successful, but they are “new demand” and do not harm existing TLDs

3. Cannibalize Demand – The New gTLDs are successful, but the eat demand from other groups of existing TLDs

Let’s look at how growth and market share over time has shifted since the introduction of ICANN’s New gTLD program.

The above graph depicts actual global domain counts by .com, .net, ccTLDs, other gTLDs and New gTLDs from 2012 - 2022. The real impact of Round 1 New gTLDs was a combination of Scenarios 2 & 3 from above.  Initially New gTLDs showed an uptick in global growth indicating “new demand” and have grown to 8% global market share.  The ccTLD group took a hit in 2016 but seemed to stabilize and recover over time. The .com TLD continued to grow seaming not phased by the New gTLD program. However, the New gTLD volumes cannibalized the “Other gTLDs” group performance causing it to shrink from 8% to 5%. That 3% shrinkage led to real volume decreases over time in the Other gTLD group. In hindsight, the major impact on Other gTLDs makes sense as the new gTLDs offered Internet users wider name choice than the limited scope of “Other gTLDs” which saw users let go of domains and result in the shrinkage.

As ICANN prepares to launch Round 2 there are new market conditions: slowing or shrinking growth, consolidation of players, blockchain and web3, cybersecurity, global politics of Internet governance and other factors. How will these curves shift going forward? Please use the Contact link to get in touch for further discussions.