Montenegro wants a bigger slice of its own domain business. On August 2, Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Policy Nik Gjeloshaj announced plans to create a state-owned company to manage .me, the country code that became an unlikely global hit because English speakers liked how it sounded.
Right now, a joint venture called doMEn runs things, made up of GoDaddy, Identity Digital, and local firm ME-net. The numbers explain the government’s frustration. Between .me’s 2008 launch and 2025, the domain brought in 114 million euros.
Montenegro’s cut was 41 million euros, roughly a third. doMEn kept 47 million euros in net profit, more than the state earned from its own asset. A May policy document didn’t mince words: the state’s share should sit at 50 percent or more.
So what actually changes here? Less than the headline suggests. Montenegro already owns .me outright, so this isn’t a dispute over rights. It’s about who runs the registry and where the money lands afterward. Officials are weighing several options, from full state control to a shared setup with the current back-end providers, though they admit the existing outsourced model still looks like the safer bet for now. A hybrid arrangement seems most likely: a state-run registry holding the core database while technical work like DNS stays with outside specialists.
Anyone who already owns a .me domain won’t notice a thing this week. Renewals and transfers continue as normal, and the announcement doesn’t set a timeline for the transition.
The bigger story reaches past Montenegro, though. Domain Incite called it the latest government demanding more revenue from its own country code, and that framing matters. These domain deals are concessions, and any sovereign that grants a concession can renegotiate it later. GoDaddy and Identity Digital spent seventeen years turning .me into a steady business. Now Podgorica is sending a clear signal: the growth continues, but Montenegro sets the terms.
