It has been announced that the registry behind the .co domain has been acquired by Neustar. Neustar are currently operate the .us, .biz and .tel registries and have already been involved in the running of .co’s back end services since its launch in 2010. CO Internet SAS, which is based in Bogota, Colombia, has been acquisitioned for an estimated $109 million and currently manages around 1.6 million .co domains.
.co was originally set out as the ccTLD for Colombia however has been marketed as a viable alternative to the .com TLD with notable companies such as Twitter using as part of its URL shortening service (t.co).
The .co registry reportedly finished 2013 with $21 million revenue in 2013 and has earned plaudits for their marketing approach which has made .co popular with the value of the acquisition also showing how far their team have come in four years since their creation.