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With potential sale to Ethos Capital, .org domain is at risk – Source fastcompany.com

In an era of powerful search engines, you seldom need to type in or remember the addresses of the websites you’re visiting. Often, you may not even remember if a business’s website ends in .com, .biz, or something zanier—like .pizza.

For many nonprofit organizations, though, having a .org domain name is still a matter of prestige, conveying a sense of credibility to the public. For years, the organization that manages .org names, called the Public Interest Registry, has been in the hands of a nonprofit called the Internet Society.

But last fall, the Internet Society announced that it intended to sell the registry to Ethos Capital, a private equity firm, for more than $1.1 billion. (The registry brought in just shy of $93 million in registration fees for 2018, according to public IRS filings). The move raised fears that what many charitable groups see as a vital part of internet infrastructure would suddenly be moved from a nonprofit into the hands of a business with an interest…

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Source : fastcompany.com

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