The worst kept secret in the Australian domain market is now official.
Overnight there has been this announcement from Trellian:
“Trellian has announced its further expansion into the .AU Drop Catch business with the acquisition of the highly successful Drop Catch platform DomainShield.com.au
Having only a handful of auDA accredited registrars that are authorized to Drop Catch, the acquisition further strengthens Trellian’s Feb 2017 acquisition of Drop.com.au Drop Catch Platform and Registrar.”
This acquisition makes a lot of sense for David Warmuz and the Trellian group.
The only thing that surprised me is that neither Domain Shield or Drop advised their customers before making this public announcement. But I suppose that is “nit-picking”!
I wish them great success – particularly in these times of market uncertainty. It will be good to see Netfleet get a run for their money from a well-resourced operator like Trellian.
Ned O’Meara – 11th October
Hi Ned,
Thanks for the post… but not sure that one person suspecting something, would actually classify as the worst kept secret… But I am happy with the outcome.
The press release is for today, which includes a number of mailouts to Above.com, Drop.com.au and DomainShield.com.au clients that have already started going out.
Cheers
David
@David – now you’re “nit-picking”!
There was many more than “one person” that knew something was in the wind. You should know by now that the domain industry has a great rumour mill attached to it.
I happened to see the announcement on your Facebook page about 3 hours ago, and then wrote my article. TheDomains.com posted at about the same time; and so has DNJournal.
Still haven’t got any email from either DomainShield or Drop though. I would have thought clients would come first. 😉
But I do genuinely wish you well.
Thanks Ned,
Client notification has been sent out now as well.
Cheers
David
Got them! Thanks David. 🙂
Congrats to both parties.
Hopefully the transparent bidding process at drop will prevail over the blind bidding at DS.