Little stat from Mr. Stratton Sclavos (VeriSign/Network
Solutions President & CEO) I was looking at today:~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"....the
NSI Registrar today holds a cumulative market share of around 50% of all .com, .net,
and .org registrations and under 40% of new .com, .net, and .org registrations"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(That's not to mention the
anemic portion of the country code Top Level Domains (such as ".ru" ".tv" ".us" or
:.uk" NetSols registers)
That is absolutely astounding when you
consider that from the start of the Internet boom until mid-1999 they were THE ONLY
registering agency. Network Solutions claims this is due to "incredible competition
in the marketplace".... I think it illustrates how pathetic they are at business,
domain registry and customer service. People flock to registrars like Register.com
and BulkRegister mainly because they can now get away from Network Solutions.
Our company does not do business with the "ethically challenged" Network Solutions
(now owned by VeriSign). Network Solutions continues to engage in policies
and practices that are disastrous to business on the Internet and their own customers.
Here are just a few of the common practices of Network Solutions....
- customers
pay extra money to receive actual customer service on their domains (novel idea)
-
creating "partnerships" with ISP's and webhosting companies only to compete with
the very services they provide
- indefinitely holding expirations of valuable
domains only to sell them at Network Solution auction
- continual "anti-trust"
type activities that stifle competition and make Microsoft look like a co-op
Now abandoning the ".org" domains to maintain control over the more plentiful and
profitable ".net" and ".com" top level domains? While many use the ".org" top
level domain for NPO's, many do not. Under this scenario people would need
to justify its use or could even lose their domains? Neither option is acceptable
when Network Solutions is the company who "waived" this original NPO requirement
(as long as more people were willing to pay them for the domain). Its amazing
what you can accomplish if your are the controlling arm of the pseudo agency "ICANN".
Now ".org" no longer serves them so they will abandon the domain to its fate?
I think everyone should give ICANN their thoughts on these proposed changes and try
to stop them. VeriSign Media Contact: Brian O'Shaughnessy, boshaughnessy@verisign.com,
+1-650/429-5270 VeriSign Investor Contact: Katie Ochsner, kochsner@verisign.com,
+1-650/429-3512.
Tim Otterbein