ICANN engaged with Analysis Group to conduct an economic study examining pricing trends and other competition indicators in the global domain name market. Analysis Group designed and executed an initial study, in a timely manner, to create a meaningful baseline of data on multiple factors of competition and will perform a follow-on study one year later, to generate and analyze a set of comparison data.
The economic study captured some of the metrics proposed by ICANN's community to evaluate the impact of the New gTLD Program on Competition, Consumer Trust and Consumer Choice.
As the DNS serves a large ecosystem of registries, registry service operators, registrars and resellers, and domain name registrants, the study captured inputs in a representative manner from across the multitude of players relevant to marketplace practices. Results from the Analysis Group economic study will be available later in 2015.
The Review Team formed under the AoC will take into consideration the findings of these studies as it examines other measures of competition, such as survey findings on end users' perceived choice in the DNS, as well as the quantities of New gTLD operators, service providers, registrars, domain name registrations, and other metrics. The review may also provide recommendations to ICANN on additional initiatives that should be undertaken.
