Leaves Neustar to launch co.com domain name registry — Ken Hansen

Hansen will join team offering third level domain registrations under co.com.

Three well known people in the domain name industry have teamed up to offer domain name registrations under co.com, e.g. name.co.com.

Ken Hansen has resigned his position at Neustar to join the fresh venture as CEO. Paul Goldstone (who owned the second level domain co.com) will be President and Gregg McNair (Igloo.com) will be Chairman.

This is rather shocking news regarding Hansen, who has led many of Neustar’s fresh top level domain name efforts. He is resigning just ahead of they come to fruition.

Domain registrations under .co.com will be third level domain names, similar to many of those offered by CentralNic. The idea of a third level registration with “co” is nothing fresh; sixty-one countries right now offer domain names ending in “co.countrycode” such as co.uk and co.jp, with registrations for those extensions totaling over 11 million, as stated by co.com.

As a result, many subdomains of co.com by now receive traffic.

The domain name is sure to cause some confusion with .co, and perhaps even the “legacy” com.co addresses. .Co uses Neustar for its registry.

Co.com has not finalized its backend registry provider yet. It hopes to launch in Q1 2014.