Zodiac
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| Type: | Privately Held |
| Industry: | New gTLDs |
| Founded: | 2008 |
| Country: | Cayman Islands/Hong Kong/P.R. China |
| Email: | info@zodiacregistry.com |
| Key People | |
| James Seng, CEO Wang Jian (Mack Wang), COO Tang Li Hong, Vice-President Xiangjian Li (Eugene Li), Vice-President | |
Zodiac is the single largest Chinese gTLD applicant, having applied for 15 TLDs in ICANN's New gTLD Program, 13 of which are IDNs.[1] The company was founded and is led by James Seng (ChingHong Seng), who is largely credited as the inventor of the IDN (Internationalized Domain Name), which allows users to utilize the Internet using non-Latin standard scripts. The possibility of introducing generic IDNs to the market has been made possible for the first time via ICANN's new TLD expansion program; all previous IDNs introduced were ccTLDs.[2]
Zodiac has partnered with KNET and CNNIC to provide backend registry functions.[3]
TLDs Applied for[edit | edit source]
- .wang - transliteration of characters for "web" and "king" (common Chinese surname)
- .show - "Chinglish" for Chinese char "秀" (Xiu)
- .佛山 - Chinese (Hans/Simplified) script for Foshan
- .广东 - Chinese (Hans/Simplified) script for Guangdong
- .广州 - Chinese (Hans/Simplified) script for Guangzhou
- .深圳 - Chinese (Hans/Simplified) for Shenzhen
- .八卦 -Chinese (Hans/Simplified) "gossip"
- .网店 - Chinese (Hans/Simplified) "webshop/e-shop"
- .商城 - Chinese (Hans/Simplified) "mall"
- .我爱你 - Chinese (Hans/Simplified) "I love you"
- .时尚 - Chinese (Hans/Simplified) "vogue/fashion"
- .网站 - Chinese (Hans/Simplified) "website/homepage/portal"
- .娱乐 - Chinese (Hans/Simplified) "entertainment"
- .慈善 - Chinese (Hans/Simplified) "charity"
- .集团 - Chinese (Hans/Simplified) "conglomerate/group"[4]
Background[edit | edit source]
The company offers the following description of itself at the beginning of each of its TLD applications:
Zodiac Holdings Limited (“Zodiac”) was founded and incorporated in Cayman Islands by James Seng in 2008 in anticipation of the launch of the ICANN new gTLD program. Currently, it is headquartered in Hong Kong and has an operation center in Beijing, China. The team consists of experienced veterans in the global and China domain name industry like James Seng and former China Network Information Center (CNNIC) employees such as Eugene Li.
James Seng is one of the Internet pioneers in Singapore and is widely recognized as an international expert in numerous Internet areas. He is well known as the inventor of IDN and has co-chaired the IDN Working Group in IETF from 1999 to 2004, leading to the standardization of IDN.
Eugene Li, is the former Vice President of China Network Information Center (CNNIC). During his 7 years tenure at CNNIC, Eugene has launched initiatives that doubled domain name registrations and helped CNNIC become the no. 1 ccTLD and no. 2 TLD by volume. At the time when Eugene left to join Zodiac, CNNIC has over 13 million domain name registrations.
Under the vision and leadership of James Seng, with the support of angels, venture capital firm and family offices of approximately USD 20 million in place for the application and operation of the new gTLDs, Zodiac is seeking to become the first and largest privately held ICANN-approved TLD registry operator in Asia. It intends to operate TLDs that are centric to the Chinese culture."[5]