.Shop and .Site extensions get approval from the Chinese government

.Shop and .Site just received a big holiday gift from the Chinese government today!

The 2 new extensions got government approval from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology today and join .Club, .Vip and .XYZ that got approved in early December.

Approval means that owners of these domain names within China can now apply for the relevant local license to allow their domains to be hosted in the country.

Previously to these 5 extensions, only Verisign (.COM, .NET) had been awarded approval as a non-Chinese registry.

.Shop, launched in September 2016, is owned by GMO Registry, Inc. and has now 106,902 registered domains according to NameStat.org. Chinese registrants own 38.8% of all domains.

.Site, owned by Radix, has now 569,088 registered domains according to NameStat.org. Chinese registrants own 92.8% of all domains. .Site launch in July 2015.

.Shop announced the approval from China on Twitter:

“.shop to launch in China on January 11 after being granted license by Chinese government today!”

Here are the links to the official announcements today on MIIT: .shop and .site.

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About Konstantinos Zournas

I studied Computer Engineering and Computer Science in London, UK and I am now living in Athens, Greece. I went online in 1995, started coding in 1996 and began buying domain names and creating websites in 2000. I started the OnlineDomain.com blog in 2012.

4 comments

  1. This is actually promising. It shows that there will be several more approved (potentially). I think China is well aware of the money to be made in this industry. They won’t be locking all the doors. They just want to focus on the cream of the crop and are trying to only pick the ones they feel benefit their nations economey the best.

  2. K-great post. The real question is when will .ws be approved in China. If you recall there are some major investors holding numerics and others in this extension in a big way and looking for that approval. Happy Holidays.

  3. When comes to business, China is no stranger; they are trades oriented for years.
    .shop was no surprise. As Chinese people like to shop and the word shop is used in China a lot.
    .cloud should be authorized too; I think China’s rocket was the first to reach cloud. Maybe I’m wrong. ?

  4. .site was a surprise?

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