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Internet
business news and analysis by Dylan Tweney
| 9 August 1999 | |
Wherefore art thou Tweney.com?The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) collected more enemies last week, this time in the House of Representatives and the Senate [1,2]. ICANN is the non-profit corporation charged with revamping the Internet's domain name system. ICANN has been bogged down in bureaucracy and politics, fumbling to balance a host of conflicting demands: trademark law, intellectual property, international issues, the dilemma of central control of DNS vs. the distributed nature of the Internet... and ICANN chairman, pundit Esther Dyson, is hardly proving herself a magnetic leader in the fracas. But it's not like Network Solutions Inc. (NSI), the existing administrator of DNS, is looking much better. In the past two years, NSI has gone from being a small-time government contractor with revenues of under $20 million to being a high-flying Net stock (market cap: $2.5 billion, although the stock has slid a bit in the past few months). It's done all this mostly on the strength of its monopolistic control of key portions of DNS: the .com, .net, and .org top-level domains. It hasn't helped that NSI keeps irritating people with high-handed tactics, like turning off WHOIS access to its database (it's back on now) and redirecting www.internic.net to its own corporate home page. The whole DNS controversy is rapidly becoming what my good friend John Vincent calls a "tragi-dot-comedy." In fact, DNS is such a morass that I think the most likely outcome is complete and wholesale replacement of the system. DNS, after all, isn't *essential* to the Net's operation -- it's just a convenient alternative to typing in IP addresses like 209.182.200.129. Sure, we all rely on it now for e-mail addresses and Web addresses -- but what if someone built an alternative system? Example: RealNames Corp., formerly known as Centraal, [3] offers a service that lets you type in addresses like "Ford Explorer" or "Dylan Tweney" instead of www.ford.com or www.tweney.com, assuming you've installed the RealNames add-on for your browser. (Note: I don't actually have a RealName, so that last example won't work if you try it.) But RealNames are not going to win the race to replace DNS. Why? Because they actually charge *more* than NSI for RealNames registration -- $100 per year as opposed to NSI's $35 per year for domain names. (Now you know why I don't have one.) Yet Centraal's RealNames are less usable -- they don't automatically work in every browser -- and are not widely recognized yet. Someone needs to send a few MBAs over to RealNames to give them a basic business lesson: If you're trying to undercut an established market leader, you generally do it by offering the same or better quality at a lower price. What Centraal offers is an inferior product at three times the price. They don't stand a chance. But someone might. Offer a cheap and usable alternative to DNS, get it bundled into 80% of the browsers and email clients, and spend about three zillion dollars on marketing, and you'd have the Internet sewn up in a neat little bag. And then ICANN and DNS could both go muck up DNS as much as they wanted, and nobody would much care anymore. Pop quiz: Who has an enormous marketing budget, controls millions of browser and e-mail clients -- and, coincidentally, already owns a partially-deployed alternative naming system? Hint: It's not Microsoft. [1] ICANN controversy extends to White House [2] Senators chastise ICANN, NSI [3] RealNames Corp. AOL STEPPED UP THE PRESSURE in its instant-messaging battle with Microsoft by signing deals with two large ISPs, Earthlink Networks and Mindspring, to distribute AOL Instant Messenger [4]. This adds 2.5 million more potential users to AIM's network. Of course, the user-counting of instant messaging clients is notoriously exaggerated. AOL may claim an audience of tens of millions, but just because I've downloaded and installed the AIM software or ICQ doesn't mean I continue to use it. Meanwhile, MSN Messenger users are still blocked from connecting to AIM users. But when they're disconnected, they receive a message from AOL inviting them to switch to AIM. [5] [4] EarthLink, MindSpring join AOL instant messaging [5] AOL baits MSN Messenger users AMAZON.COM AND THE NEW YORK TIMES have settled, out of court, the question of whether Amazon can continue to use the New York Times bestseller list on Amazon's site [6,7]. The Times had objected to Amazon's unauthorized use of what they rightly consider a valuable piece of intellectual property -- even though that use would seem to be nothing but beneficial for the Times' brand. (Amazon.com offers 50% discounts on NY Times bestsellers.) According to the agreement, Amazon can use the list, but only alphabetically, not in rank order; Amazon also agreed to share its sales data with the New York Times. It's not mentioned in the news coverage, but it's likely that Amazon also agreed to continue buying its regular complement of expensive full-page ads in the New York Times. Ain't it amazing how quickly greed can bring someone to the bargaining table? [6] Amazon.com,
New York Times Settle Dispute Over Bestsellers [7] Amazon, New York Times resolve copyright suit NET
PROPHET: Webvan delivers logistics lesson to online vendors What is it about books and electronic commerce? First, Jeff Bezos launched a Web bookstore .... Now, Borders Books founder Louis Borders has created Webvan (www.webvan.com), an online grocery store that may redefine online commerce as radically as Amazon.com has. ... click for more ... ~ Back issues ~Taxing issues: Fritz Hollings proposes a national Internet sales tax; Yahoo rumored to buy ExciteAtHome; vicious online pet competition; the password shuffle (8.2.1999). Chatter, chatter: AOL and Microsoft battle over instant messaging; beaming money via PalmPilot; Sidewalk sold to CitySearch and the agonies of local merchants over e-commerce; the need for data 'garages' (7.26.99) Two wrongs: Egghead-Onsale merger; procurement solutions reviewed by InfoWorld; an update on the Odyssey Project; globalization trends on the Web (7.19.1999).
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