Alibaba Cloud aims to disrupt the domain industry with AI

Author | Liu Baodan

Editor | Zhou Zhiyu

As a website address, a domain name is like a house number in real life. With the acceleration of the AI era, domain names are also ushering in new development opportunities.

On August 8th, at the Alibaba Cloud Wanwang Renewal Conference, Alibaba Cloud announced that its domain name product service has completed AI transformation, launched the first domain AI large model application, and launched popular domain name suffixes such as ".ai".

At the same time, Alibaba Cloud also launched the "Brand Support Plan" based on domain names, with the highest discount on popular domain names reaching 28%, and new users can register domain names for only 1 yuan in the first year.

Behind a series of operations, Alibaba Cloud Wanwang aims to provide more professional domain name services for global enterprises and entrepreneurs by upgrading products, models, and prices, seizing new opportunities in the AI era.

Over the past 30 years, domain names have continued to develop and grow along with the technological changes in the Chinese internet industry.

Domain names have roughly gone through three stages of development. The first stage was when the internet was just taking off, and well-known companies like google.com and alibaba.com were remembered through their domain names; the second stage was the era of mobile internet, giving birth to applications like Alipay, WeChat, TikTok, and Taobao; the third stage is the intelligent era including AI.

It can be said that the rise of Wanwang is a microcosm of the development of the Chinese domain name industry.

Founded in 1996, Wanwang was acquired by Alibaba and merged with Alibaba Cloud in 2013. With the technical support and investment from Alibaba Cloud, it has become a leader in the industry. As of now, the cumulative registration of domain names under Alibaba Cloud Wanwang has exceeded 40 million, with over 2 million users. One out of every three domain names in China is managed through Alibaba Cloud.

Behind each round of technological iteration lies new opportunities for the development of the internet industry. Currently, the global internet industry has begun to enter the AI era, which will bring greater market demand for the domain name industry.

Gao Kun, General Manager of Small and Medium Business Applications at Alibaba Cloud, is very optimistic about the future market growth of domain names. In her view, the potential of the domain name industry lies in the accelerated digital transformation, where domain names as network gateways will encounter new opportunities; the rise of Chinese national brands will lead to an increase in demand for national domain names with Chinese characteristics; small and medium-sized enterprises are entering a "great navigation" era, driving the demand for local country code domain names, while large enterprises are pursuing a "one enterprise, one domain" strategy.

More importantly, the outbreak of AI technology is expected to bring rapid growth in applications.

Liu Zixiang, Product Manager of Small and Medium Business Applications at Alibaba Cloud, believes that domain names have two values. In the early stages of the industry, users needed to access web pages through domain names, but with the development of mobile internet, the value of domain names has shifted from brand value to link value.

Liu Zixiang further emphasizes, "Most apps and wearable devices need to interact with backend servers, and the growth of intelligent entities will bring a large amount of service access. To ensure the high availability of a large number of services, domain names are necessary. This is also the main reason we are optimistic about the future growth of domain names."

Gao Kun believes that with the explosion of smart devices and massive applications, the linking role of domain names will become more prominent. At the same time, the deep integration of AI technology with the industry will lead to a revolution in interaction methods, and intelligent entities based on large models will become standard in the domain name industry Alibaba Cloud Wanwang renews after many years, undoubtedly a bet on the future development of the domain name industry.

With the help of domain name AI applications, Alibaba Cloud Wanwang has achieved intelligent naming. Users only need to input brand information and industry, and based on the Tongyi model, creative domain names can be generated in batches. Moreover, the model will automatically conduct semantic analysis, provide available choices through multidimensional evaluation and usability screening.

This time, Alibaba Cloud has also introduced more than 40 new domain name suffixes, including ".ai", ".car", ".me", etc. There are over 200 domain name suffixes that can be registered, and over 20 million global domain name sources available for trading.

From domain name registration, website construction, ICP filing, DNS resolution services to domain name value assessment, Alibaba Cloud has newly integrated and upgraded the systematic services of domain name-related products.

For example, relying on 19 global DNS cluster nodes, Alibaba Cloud can provide users with nearby access and the ability to resolve with the lowest latency, with the capability to handle over a hundred million DNS queries per second at the highest; website security is also guaranteed, users can enjoy DDoS protection capabilities on the cloud similar to global businesses such as Tmall, Taobao, and Ant Group.

Zhang Liang, Vice President of Alibaba Cloud's Small and Medium Enterprise Business Unit, said at the meeting, "The renewal of Wanwang is Alibaba Cloud's latest practice in the domain name field based on 'cloud computing + AI' technology. Alibaba Cloud will continue to iterate domain name services through new technologies to help Chinese companies establish brand reputation in the global market."

Alibaba Cloud's global adventure has added another heavyweight weapon