China-based domain registrar West.cn has launched West.xyz, a website that appears to target the English speaking audience. The company will continue to operate its West.cn website separately from West.xyz. It is unclear to me whether they are two separate domain registrars or if West.xyz is simply another website operated by West.cn.
The news was announced by West.cn on Twitter this afternoon and retweeted by Shayan Rostam of the .XYZ Registry:
one of our largest partners in china @westdotcn decided to go international so of course they used a @xyz: https://t.co/h4InZULtIn #genxyz
— Shayan Rostam (@shayanrostam) August 25, 2016
According to nTLDStats.com, West.cn owns the largest market share of registered new gTLD domain names. At the time of publication, West.cn has a slightly more than 4.5 million registered new gTLD domain names under management, making up more than 19% of all registered new gTLD domain names.
I reached out to Shayan to see if the registry has any comment about the launch, and here’s what he told me this afternoon:
“We’re thrilled to see West263 join other big businesses like Deloitte (Exponentials.xyz), Imagine Publishing (GadgetDaily.xyz) and HBO (Hooli.xyz) in launching their newest global initiative on West.xyz. This is the first of many valued XYZ registrar partners who we expect to see rebrand with a .xyz domain as the internet landscape continues to evolve.”
I briefly looked through the West.xyz website, and it looks like their pricing is in Chinese Yuan instead of USD or even Euro. I think this will need to change if they really intend to target the US market.
I understand that a press release announcing the news will be forthcoming.
