[registrars] Verisign Honeymoon will end

[Larry Erlich <erlich@domainregistry.com>]

In a previous post, Ivan Vachovsky said:

-- "Everything will come to its place if there would be 50 + competing top 
-- level domains. Than VeriSign will respect its channel and will never 
-- compete with it."

I don't think that the Verisign of the future
will be our "daddy". 

Unfortunately, one of the reasons .com is so popular
has to do with the amount of companies that went PUBLIC
with .com names, and the amount of advertising money that
was spent promoting .com businesses (and I don't mean
trying to sell .com names with advertising dollars.)

It's called ubiquity and .com has it. (The cybersquatters
also have helped.) 

.NET doesn't have ubiquity and neither will .TV no matter how 
much money they spend to promote it. 

If/when the stock markets and high flying IPO's return 
(and it will never be like the last few years) 
but if/when they do, it remains to be seen which TLDDOT companies 
will be going public, and what effect their advertising dollars 
will have to do to drive the selling of domain names as has been done 
with .com. In other words, will there be IPO's
of .biz companies, and will .biz companies place full
page ads in the WSJ and run Superbowl ads? 

Having been doing this since 1996, I can tell you
that the business would not be what it is today
if not for the wild IPO market (which made .COM
a household word) and VC money blown
on Superbowl ads, PR firms etc. 

I would like to think that the future will be
great with all the new TLD's, and that it would
result in Verisign respecting the registrars.
But I don't think that that will be the case,
and if it is it will be many years down the road.

THE HONEYMOON WILL SOON BE OVER.

There is another issue with regard to Verisign/NSI
that is very important to understand. 

Right now we are in the "honeymoon" phase, better
called that "grand opening feeling". This is when
a business is new, and they trip all over you
to please you. It doesn't last forever. The 
management ages, the thrill wears off, and
having a lock on the business helps alot
to make a company lazy with respect to 
its customers (us). 

Well, anyway, what do you
think will happen once this NEW contract
is approved, and they know they pretty much have a lock
on the business (presumptive renewals) into perpetuity??? 

Right now they answer the phone on the
first ring, and they are very receptive to solving
various problems and issues. (And I would
imagine that they have been on especially
good behavior knowing what they are
trying to achieve here with the rewriting
of the contract.)

But what will happen in the future under
the new contract? Think about that. 

After the "grand opening feeling is all gone. 

And when they can make more money by selling
directly to the end user rather than
through accredited registrars.

Larry Erlich

http://www.DomainRegistry.com
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Larry Erlich - DomainRegistry.com, Inc.
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