.cn becomes the largest ccTLD

Lexington, KY – August 8, 2008

 The internet analysis firm Zooknic, Inc. reports that China's top level domain (.cn) surpassed Germany (.de) as the largest country code top level domain  (ccTLD) in the world.  As of July 2008 the .cn TLD had 12.36 million domains and the .de TLD had 12.15 million domains. Germany (.de) has long been the world's largest ccTLD but during the last twenty four months .cn domain names have increased by more than 950 percent.  

 Together, the .cn and .de ccTLDs represent 37 percent of the 65.4 million country code domains registered worldwide.  Other TLDs (such as .com or .asia) have over 104 million registrations making total domain registrations worldwide 170 million.

 In January 2007, .cn was the 5th largest ccTLD (behind .de, .uk, .eu and .nl) and the 9th largest TLD overall (behind .com, .de, .net, .uk, .org, .info, .eu, and .nl).  As of July 2008 .cn TLD is the second largest top level domain in the world.  Only .com is larger.

 Matthew Zook, founder and president of ZookNIC notes, "I am particularly happy to report this achievement on the opening day of the Beijing Olympics.  A combination of pricing incentives, policy changes and the continued expansion of Chinese Internet users have resulted in this extraordinary growth for .cn."   

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Zooknic Inc. (www.zooknic.com) provides timely and accurate analysis on the use and diffusion of the Internet and domain names.  

Contact:

Matthew Zook, Ph.D. zook@zooknic.com;510-410-1410