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Verisign to Purchase Network Solutions
thor writes, "According to CNBC, Verisign (VRSN) will purchase Network Solutions (NSOL) for approx. $21B ($531/share). Looks like the story of the day for a lot of people on and off of Wall Street. Network Solutions closed at $360 5/8 yesterday is trading up $100 in early hours trading. " I've also found the story on CNNfn. Why does this merger scare me?
It isn't as bad as Verisign buying Thawte though. Mark
Spam is about as Libertarian a phenomenon as I can think of. Why are you all picking on Spam?
Great,
Now my encryption keys can be delivered to my neighbor's door, if they aren't lost first. Oh no, wait, they need to be copied to the FBI first...
The USPS is the biggest government sponsored monopoly around, do you want the US government to get a greater control over the global internet than they have already?
you wanna know who taught them to do this shit? it was you, slashdot! they learned it from you!
I don't see how it could possibly get any worse.
Maybe this will result in domain names being propigated in the elusive 48 hours promised instead of months of billing errors and whois entry mayhem. I dunno, they piss me off ok?
Now the entire interanet will be SECURE! Verisign will make the security on the domains and the stuff. YEAH!
Are the days when all corporations merge into one far off? Think of how cool it will be where there is just one web site.. ocp.com where you will go to buy,trade, get news and info, etc. It will ROCK to not have to shop around the internet or go to brick and motar stores. Everything will be at ocp.com and will be delivered via OCP Delivery Services (formerly UPS-Airborne Express-FedEx-US Postal Service) and paid for on your OCP credit card (Formerly Visa-Mastercard-Discover-AmEx card). It'll make choices so much easier when there is only one.
We shouldn't have to deal with it if it's illegal.
Verisign is a monopoly. But I suppose that can
be fixed money and the lobby.
Nice country to be in if your an executive I guess. Bow down to the great executives everyone,
and be especially respectful during the holy period of merging.
Quick! Everyone to the bomb shelters! Women and children first -- followed closely by all you mindless conspiracy theorists! I would strongly urge the Chicken Little set to sit down and take a deep breath. Feel the blood coming back into your brain? Good. Get a grip. You're making waaaaay to much out of this. Neither one of these companies has a monopoly on their respective businesses. And if you all really believe that NSI will be the only dog in the domain race, you're just kidding yourselves.
It's only a matter of time ...
hey retard. support doesn't end at 5.
The government uses more to decide if something is a predatory monopoly (the kind outlawed by the AntiTrust acts), but to decide if something IS a monopoly for the purposes of approving mergers, about all they use is that equation. It's surprisingly useful for its simplicity.
Verisign is a monopoly, and you really haven't given any reason that it shouldn't be considered one other than your incorrect definition.
If you had learned about monopolies in even an intro econ course you would know that there are all sorts of monpolies:
1. Those that exist naturally (due to economies of scale)
2. Those that exist by government fiat.
3. Those that exist because of high barriers to entry.
etc.
Not all monopolies are necessarily evil. In case 1, a monopoly might be better than whatever artificial methods it would take to create a "competitive" market.
My point is that you do not have to be MS or Standard Oil to be a monopoly. You just have to have near-exclusive control on a market. You don't even have to try to maintain it. I could create a monpoly in selling my autographs and no one would challenge me; it's still a monopoly, even by the legal definition.
You can start up a competing certificate facility, but could you succeed at it? Could anyone? Could you attain more than a fringe market? If the answers to these questions are "no", then we have a monopoly. Why, if there is no monopoly and there are gobs of profits (a good sign of a monopoly), is there no genuine new competition? If it's so easy, why don't you start a competing facility?
For digital Security Certificates not issued by Verisign see http://www.e-certify.com/products/wsc.html
Baloney, just make sure you prompt first time users to install the proper root CA.
But we don't live in a democracy. The United States is a republic and has been for over two hundred years. A democracy is for someone who likes the concept of mob rule.
A quick analysis:
Purchase price: $21B
Verisign: 1999 Revenues = $84.8M
1999 Earnings = $4M
Market Cap = $19.259B (at $187 7/8 per share)
Price/Sales = 227.1
Price/Earnings = 6666.67
Network Solutions: 1999 Revenues = $220.8M
1999 Earnings = $26.9M
Market Cap = $12.9B (at $386/share)
Price/Sales = 58.4
Price/Earnings = 529.08
If VeriSign continues to trade at a P/S of 227.1, the acquired Network Solutions revenues add $50B to its market cap, or $29B more than the acquisition price.
For a "wash", the market cap of the combined company needs to be $60.159B (adding the market caps of the companies and the acquisition price). With combined revenues of $305.6M, the company will need to trade at a P/S of 196.9, or 86% of VeriSign's current P/S. With combined earnings of $30.9M, the company will need to trade at a P/E of 1946.9, or 29% of VeriSign's current P/E.
If investors follow P/E, they may accept some slightly higher level of P/E reduction, say 40% of VeriSign's original P/E. In this case, the combined company adds $22B in market cap over the combination plus purchase.
Becoming a certificate signer has NOTHING to do with web servers, nor does it have anything to do with domain registration. AOL could be blessed by the Pope himself and everyone in the world could be running AOLServer, and it wouldn't matter one bit. The only thing you need to do is have your certificate in web browsers. That's the hard part (let's see you get your certificate in Netscape 3.0! Even AOL couldn't do that; they can't force people to upgrade, which is what you would need to do).
I mean, what are the two companies big products?
NetworkSolutions = domain name registry
Verisign = certificate signature
I always figured domain name registration was a more lucrative field than certificates...or am I missing something?
Well, NS charges $35/year for a domain. It has competition throughout the world.
Verisign charges $345/first year for a certificate, per SITE, not just domain. It bought its competition.
So roughly 10 domains equals 1 Certificate in money. Plus there's more maintenance to NSI than Verisign. How many times did you get a letter from NSI reminding you to pay your bill, before they wised up and made you pay in advance? (:
Isn't Verisign the de-facto key escrow bank of the NSA?
Yeah, VeriSign is going to lead us to a world of "Security" where they sell their little gif to whoever forks out enough $$$ for it. VeriSign is a worthless company. People no longer trust them, and for good reason.
Maybe NS will take over their business practices: selling people worthless products they could get for free elsewhere. Reminds you of a few other people, eh?
Or more likely, they will simply make it impossible to change anything, just like register.com
VeriSign will make NS even less secure.
Govts around the world are divesting state-owned monopolies to the private sector. USPS is allready required to turn a profit. Of course they are heavly regulated and funded but the trend is clear, govts getting out of business that can be handled by the private sector. The history of the NIC and NetSol is a prime example.
I know you were being sarcastic, but this is what's got everyone so scared. Both companies have a reputation for being fairly anti-consumer. I think their combined management team ethics will be right up their with LinuxOne.
There's always talk about government imposing e-commerce taxation. Maybe this is a route by which they'll do it ?
And what a good way to do it. The politicians can give lip service to "keeping the internet tax-free", while at the same time sending a healthy stream right into their pockets.
The idea of horse-trading between a government wanting a finger in every transactional pie, and a VeriSign DNS monopoly wanting something in exchange -- now that really is a scary prospect.
Look forward to it, especially if the Republicans make any strides in their push to take over the government. Libertarians, such as those of us in the hacker community, need to do something about this. Seriously. Do you want the government to take even more of your money to give to millionaire welfare scammers?
Trust me, if there's money to be had, some of it will be lining the pocket of your favorite corrupt Washingtonian.
I don't know about that, this whole problem seems to about the government getting more control, through the corporate puppet companies.
Of course Europe has always had a stronger socialist undercurrent, and I agree with you about the need for more TLAs.
But a united Europe would be cause for even more concern.
Yes. If Honda had 99% of the market AND had existing exclusive dealer and service networks, then, yeah, they'd still be a monopoly, but they don't. Why don't you look up what a monopoly is in an econ or antitrust law book. The government uses the sum of the squares of the percentage of the market each company has to determine if there is a monopoly. There is no way Verisign would fail this test.
Good indication of a monopoly: an especially lucritave market (where a player has $21B to throw around) where the barriers of entry should be low (very little capital, just reputation and having a certificate in the browsers), but there aren't any new viable competitors. Monopoly.
Sounds like in this particular instance, the customer loses it.
The United States Postal Service deployed over 900 Linux-based systems throughout the United States in 1997"
Like he was saying, an Utter lack of modern computerization
Unix-1989 is not modern.
like a PGP-enabled keychain fob that plugs in to your USB port and certifies that you are, in fact, you.
Yikes! I guess all the Linux people better pull that piece of black electrical tape off their USB ports (black electrical tape is the only USB 'peripheral' that the stable Linux kernels recognize) and get ready to plug in.
Oh wait! No kernel support!
Oh well, USB didn't exist in 1979, so I guess nobody thought to include it in Linux.
Well duh, who DOESN'T phone people during office hours? It's an 8-5 world ya moron.
This seems like an interesting combination; one company that for all intents and purposes controls the domain name registration system (i know, there are others, but NSI gets the most business), and Verisign controls the software certificate world. Who keeps these guys in line? Why should i trust a piece of software just because verisign tells me so?
As much as I hate "me too" posts. I have to admit to sharing a bit of the "this sounds bad" presentiment.
Here's hoping I'm wrong.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Now I'm really concerned. Since Network Solutions owns the DNS system, and VeriSign sticks its hands in every e-commerce transaction as part of the "secure" system, the two combined will have enough power to bring the system to its knees.
Now you might say "It's just a company" but companies can be very dangerous (as my local LUG found out recently). What's to stop VeriSign from extracting a larger percent of the "e-commerce" tax that they already take out (which is how the authorization is run).
Microsoft, AOL, and now VeriSol. Will the Internet ever be safe for dissenting voices?
I know this was a rhetorical question, but...
Why does this merger scare me?
Because it's unhealthy to have a few Big Ones determining the way the internet is used. We don't know the real purpose (if any) of letting everything converge into a big AOL-TimeWarner-Microsoft-Vodafone-Nokia-Verisign -combo, and as such being more or less paranoid is healthy.
Let's take a fictious example. Before September of this year (maybe a little past it), a big weakness in the RSA algorithm is "found" (made public that is). As a result nobody wants to use the RSA algorithm anymore, although the patent is free. What then? RSA or some other *SA-affiliated company comes up with a new algorithm which is patented. Your friendly neighbourhood multinational supergiant company makes sure everyone HAS to use this new algorithm. So everyone is back in line 1.
This is the real issue behind big companies. They can dominate "where we want to go today". And that is a bad thing.
-"Mommy, there's FAPKC3 in my soup!"
-"Be quiet and eat your finite automata like a good boy!"
It's an 8-5 world ya moron. BLOODY AMERICANS. The world is round, you know. Even the befrigged Classical Greeks knew that. (BTW your beloved Columbus was actually trying to prove the world was about half the size it really is.) We don't all live in your personal sodding timezone!! If you have a global market, you operate continuously or you lose it.
No, our taxes subsidize the mail and it still remains one of the most effective means of communicating via paper
Unless you have some info I don't, I don't think that's the case. From what I understand the USPS is pretty self-sufficient, though they use gov't funds for infrastructure (building new Post Offices, etc). People in cities subsidize people living in rural areas, AK, and HI just by buying stamps (as they cost the same no matter where you send from or to), since it's a lot easier to pick up a letter and deliver it within town and you could never do that from AK to HI for $0.33 without a subsidy.
But they have barriers to entry which CAN'T be removed. The barrier is that only Thawte and Verisign have their certificates in the oldest SSL-enabled browsers, so if you want your certificate recognized by everyone, you have to go with them. This will become less relevant when everyone upgrades to newer browsers, but we all know that will never happen.
Damn, damn, damn...
I turned down a job offer last month from NSOL that came with 4000 options that may have fully vested on the merger.
Damn damn damn....
Good advice. Please take it.
Of all the companies that I've dealt with on the net, Verisign was the worst.
I phoned them once asking why my certificate registration was taking weeks. They said there was a paperwork problem and they'd phoned me four times trying to get hold of me.
Turns out that Verisign only phone during office hours. US office hours. And no, they never tried to use email.
-----
That is a common misconception. Verisign certificates only authenticate the identity of the author/provider of the supplied signed document/program/widget/whatever. They in no way indicate that the author/provider is of a benevolent sort who should be trusted.
Yes, King ]=[ak3r himself can apply for and receive a Verisign certificate and prepare all of the Verisigned viruses he wants and distribute them.
At least you'll have plenty of contact information about King ]=[ak3r so you can go beat the crap out of him if you install one of his viruses!
"Flame away, I wear asbestos underwear"
My stepfather worked for UPS for 30 years; he claims they can't possibly deliver anything for rates competetive with the USPS.
Breakfast served all day!
I see it now: AOL/Time-Warner/USPS/Verisign/Network Solutions/[Your Private Company Here]
I've been there, done that, been fucked, back to the cube job.
If you beleive that, then you should probably take some drugs so that you can find reality.
These companies sell "Nothing" and are worth billions. The only reason they are worth money is they have a monopolistic hold on services. (Well netsol still has 90% of domain names)
Verisign sells the illusion of "Security".
Network Solutions sells a 1 second database update.
Only in America can companies that sell nothing, and have the worst customer support be worth billions.
-Brook Harty
You know I own VRSN and as an investment this could be a good thing for the company... get that PE out of the 8k range (scary even for the new ecom)...
As a user this scares the hell out of me. You want to talk about 500 pound gorrilas, this merger will make one. VRSN owns somthing like 90% (it could be less I could be wrong but it is still high) of the security certificates out there. I can only wonder what they are going to do with all that info(al la doubble click any one). Another post sugested a one stop shop for a secure domain name, and guess what it is alredy there. No more fuss muss and hassle... The thing that I find intersesting is that your site gets netsure protection, up to 250k of it. I wonder how or who is providing that insurance? I though that deploying and insuring a product was illegal, again I could be wrong. But the conditions (link follows) of this plan override any other terms and agreements that you may have...
http://www.verisign.com/repo sitory/netsure/netsure2.html
read it youll want to cry or laugh
I remember being very depressed when Verisign was going to buy Thawte because Thawte had always been so much better a company.
:)
When I read this about Verisign and Network Solutions, my first reaction was "they deserve each other."
Now I suppose we can wait for AOL to buy the pair of them....
_Deirdre
I'm no fan of the bloated bureacracy that is the USPO but the problem you described can hardly be blamed on them. After all, it was the health insurance company that addressed the envelope. AFAIK, the Post Office doesn't verify who lives at a particular address.
To get back on topic... It might be very appropriate for the PO to get involved in domain name management but for the U.S. only. It couldn't be any worse than when Network Solutions had their little monopoly. (Of course, having said that, I'll probably think of several nightmare scenarios.)
--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Surely you're just testing if we're awake. Elsewise-- who do you think stamps all those bar-codes on our mail? Bloody elves???
Anyway, the USPS uses Linux, according to Linux Journal issue 52:
"The United States Postal Service deployed over 900 Linux-based systems throughout the United States in 1997 to automatically recognize the destination addresses on mail pieces. Each system consists of five dual Pentium Pro 200MHz (PP200) computers and one single PP200, all running Linux.
"One of the five Linux boxes has a monitor, keyboard, mouse, CD-ROM and floppy--the other four are headless. Each has 128MB RAM and a 2.5GB hard drive. The mail pieces are scanned at 212dpi at a rate of 12 per second. The binary image is sent to one of the Linux boxes via a custom cable and receiver board. The board packs the bits and uses DMA (direct memory access) to transfer the data over the PCI bus. The receiving computer runs a process that compresses the images and routes them via Ethernet to one of 10 identical processes, two for each CPU, that do the hand-print recognition and machine-print recognition. Those algorithms recognize the text from the image in less than a second and return the ASCII results to a database on a separate computer that looks up the zip code. The slave computers are connected on a subnet with the master which has a second Ethernet card connected to the rest of the computers associated with the scanner. The local network is 10Mbps Ethernet and handles the compressed binary images sent to the slaves and the ASCII results received from the slaves. "
HOWTO get better dates on slashdot
No... That's the customers issue, not Network Solutions... THey can easily opt for a more stringent update policy.
Scary though, how one company will now own 99% of the certificate market, as well as 99% of the domain market... At least they're not completely related, but it still looks like every hopeful e-commerce company is going to have to pay whatever toll that verisign decides to levy.
Actually, Network solutions trades at slightly saner levels (P/E wise) than Ebay, Yahoo, etc... I tried the other ecommerce companies, but what do you know, they have no earnings...
Supposing NSOL has 2,000,000 names registered, that's 140 million/year...
Pretty decent earnings, i'd say... ANd for most people they're still the 1st name and almost only name in domain registration
Yeah... the AOL/Time Warner thing really caught me off guard... But so far as Verisign/Netsol goes, yeah it'd be more logical if it went the other way around but the economics are much different.
Netsol makes money only from domain holders. Verisign makes up for only earning money from secure sites by charging much more for their services. They have a much lower volume business with much higher margins. Also, a lot of people also have verisigns "personal certificates" installed..
Your arguments seem moot...
1 - so long as they're accepting payment, why should they care if the person they sold something to gives real information or not... Kind of like radio shack, i hate getting things there because they insist on knowing who i am, so they can send me catalogs or anything.
2 - Again, it's never been their stated policy to delete domains that spammers use... It's absurd to think they should. I mean, the napster argument goes, they only give the tools, they don't encourage piracy. Likewise, Netsol sells domains, they don't encourage spamming...
3 - Again, the DNS changes, you can set whether you want to be notified before or after an update. It's in your hands, not theirs...
With your gripes about spam, what good does it do the world if one registrar will delete a domain if someone spams from it, if the others don't? it's not like spammers have to use Domain Bank to get their names. Much as i don't like spam, it shouldn't be regulated by DNS policy... I don't know who what or how to stop spam, but deleting a spammers domain seems absurd. It's easy enough to block a domain from sending email to you.
Don't relegate me to flamebait or trolldom for this, but those sound like much better fundamentals than Redhat or VA Linux. Redhat sells a completely free product, with all their R&D also being done for all of their competitors as well... VA Linux just doesn't have the volume to *trully* compete with Dell, IBM, Gateway or Compaq, if and when they open their eyes and realize that there's a tremendous need for Linux system integrators.
Network solutions, on the other hand, profits from every company and individual registering a domain name. Even if you register through one of their competitors, they still make money. There's a constant turnover on domains, with the two year leases, which turns into almost guarenteed income. That, plus with the immanent inclusion of more top level domains, which means that the market will be opened up to even more domain names and variants, and the fact that e-commerce is still in it's infancy, means that they have a VERY solid business for the foreseeable future.
Much more solid than almost any other company in the computer industry, in my view. And i don't own any shares in netsol or verisign, either.
Looks like Verisign might become the Microsoft of the Internet. They've gobbled up Thawte which as far as I was aware the only competition with regards to digital certificates. It would have concerned me even more if ICANN had not allowed for other registrars to pop up for .com/.net/.org domain names. This could get nasty IMHO.
So, when will we be able to get both our domain names, as well as our SSL certificates, from slashdot?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
What about all the other countries in the world?
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
I haven't enough data to understand why this is a disturbing development. I was under the impression that NS had nowhere to go but up.
No, I don't think this is a good thing either.
our taxes subsidize the mail
Wrong, the USPS is required by law to be self-sufficient. They do from time to time borrow money from the government to finance buildings and equipment, but since the '70s, the Post Office uses no tax money.
Don
The bottom line is that it's dangerous when the consumer, me, has exactly one choice for who to go to for [pruduct].
ARE YOU STILL ALIVE?!
Tsk, tsk...
I gonna have a tough talk with the guys today. Maybe, I'll even have to fire them.
Well, on the upside, maybe Verisign will tighten up the security at Network Solutions -- like the ability to change people's domain info with spoofed mail.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
Have any of the articles mentioned whether Verisign will acquire both the registry and registrar functions of NSI, or just one? One of the ICANN-NSI agreements last November required NSI to separate the registry (database) and registrar (signing up new domains) functions at some point in the future. I can't find the details on the ICANN site now.
-- Openlaw: Fighting for fair use and the public domain
...so that's why all that mail addressed to "Slashdot Karma Whore" still manages to find me. ;-)
You are right, of course. I can only beg the court for mercy on grounds that I hadn't finished my morning tea at the time of posting.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
Yeah, I've wondered that myself...but then I come home and look through my mail to find I've received health insurance statements for someone who lived here three years ago. :-)
Good idea in theory. If they can do it, and do it right, I say go for it.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
Although the overall growth looks similar, there are a few important differences between now and then and some things to keep in mind:
This is not to say the market will keep going and going, there will be a correction, but it will not be 1929 all over again.
I cannot confirm nor deny the allegation or allegations you may or may not have just made
Take a close look at your mail, your zip code. Five numbers + 4 numbers, there are actually two more there + 2. With those 11 numbers, the mail can be delivered to your door. They don't like doing it, but it can be done.
Take into consideration, if you live in an apartment building, you may still have to attach your apartment number to it. But a 5-6 line address, taken down to #542 01021-9024 24, would be pretty cool.
It's close to what you are looking for, an anonymous remailer for snail-mail, but it is a bit more cryptic and a bit more difficult to backtrack.
Looks like until then, we'll just have to enjoy Mail Boxes Etc. =)
I cannot confirm nor deny the allegation or allegations you may or may not have just made
Among other things, did you know that, for ordinary letters (and most other stuff too), the USPS is just about the cheapest major delivery service in the world? It's true. ... You certainly can't beat its price/performance; show me any other company that can deliver, say, a phone bill in three days for less than a buck, or even less than fifty cents.
In my country, New Zealand, normal mail costs about twenty US cents and FastPost, the next-business-day service, costs about forty US cents. Both are pretty reliable and normal mail is used for phone bills by both major telcos.
So there. :)
Here's another article on the Washington Post about the merger.
> it cost me fifteen times what it would have cost via USPS
Here in Canada, it's ILLEGAL for a private company to offer delivery of small mail like items for below $7-8. Guaranteed monopoly.
Many years back this kept coming up as an example of something that should be changed. I haven't heard anything of it lately though.
Well considering I'm still getting emails from Verisign about a company I worked for 2 years ago...
Seriously, Verisign has been notoriously bad at responding to anything, add that to an already aging NetSol and you have a doubly-slow, doubly-inept corporation.
The "Top 10" Reasons to procrastinate:
The "Top 10" Reasons to procrastinate:
10.
well, perhaps this will all be bad enough to be good. If they get too bad then (hopefully) enough of the market will start actively seeking alternatives.
of course then again, in a few more years whoever becomes the next big name/cert providers will probably just become as big/bloated/careless and we'll be right back where we are now.. ahh, gotta love progress. heh
Can I please please please PLEASE remind folk that the United States Post Office is a United States entity -- hardly an International one. I'm so tired of seeing a US-centric conceptual model for the internet. Get over it guys, geographical borders exist within the physical world, and IMPOSE into the virtual one.
We tell Microsoft to think OUTSIDE the box, I wish we could all think OUTSIDE the geographic when online. When it comes down to it, we will NEED to do this, else the Internet is nothing more than a bigger and faster BBS network.
Ancient Wiccan Tradition : An It Harm None, Party Like Wyld Thang
i suggest, perhaps, that you get a dictionary and stop being so emotional.
verisign is, indeed, a monopoly even though perhaps it is not "politically correct" to call them such.
a monopoly is a company which employs such practices as simply buying their competition when their competition is ripe enough to be worthwhile (or competitive) instead of attempting to overcome their competition by more conventional means such as lower prices, better services, etc.
verisign did exactly this with thawte and there is nothing stopping them from doing it again when someone else comes along hoping to compete with them
on the other hand, NSI is likely to become less of a monopoly because they are being forced to co-operate with such entities as openSRS which is sponsoring domain registrars which are, in turn, selling domains for as low as $10 per year -- no kidding, they exist today.
-abf.
-abf.
I think that you miss the relevancy of the postal service. I bank with a credit union in another state because I refuse to deal with corporate mega-banks. When forms need to be filled out and exchanged, I can put them in the mail and get them there in 2-3 days for .33. To send it by FedEx or UPS would cost about 50 times more for no added convienience. Certified mail still only costs a few dollars. Do you really think that FedEx could deliver a letter for $.33? No, our taxes subsidize the mail and it still remains one of the most effective means of communicating via paper. Don't kid yourself, this world is a very long way off from shedding its need of paper documents. Loans, insurance companies, brokerages, all of these require some degree of paper work that needs to be exchanged. If you want cheap and effiecient, you need the USPS. BTW, what if FedEx decided it was too dangerous to deliver to area's of New York, or LA; perhaps they would decide that delivering to Big Sky Montana is not cost effective, they would stop. The USPS is REQUIRED by Congress to deliver to every address in the US.
Well there are quite a few people who were not happy with NetSol anyway, so I guess that it was a really good thing that the domain name registration system opened up recently.
For those who did not catch on yet, go to http://www.opensrs.org/ for the best alternative to Network Solution.
Now if anybody needed incentive to not use NetSol anymore, I guess there is no need to wait!
et les Shadoks pompaient...
21 billion seems a bit much
I feel exactly the same. Paying $21B for anything is the type of bet that is only laid on a sure thing that will yield huge returns. I cannot help thinking that the value in this is as follows:
Linking the certificate services with the DNS registration that NSI has had a monopoly (or near-monopoly) on for so long. VeriSign and NSI have a long-term relationship in place, so there would be plenty of data for VeriSign to go on regarding the effectiveness of this basic relationship. Likely they want to deepen it by buying NSI and getting a bigger piece of the pie.
NSI has the largest existing customer base on the net. This is a huge market base, and, even with the inroads that alternative registrars have made, likely an enormous part of the value proposition. Last I checked (and I haven't been doing a lot of registrations lately), it's pretty much impossible to change the registrar of record. VeriSign will fight to the death to keep these switching costs in place.
I just wish that there was an alternative to VeriSign. As noted by many posts, their services sucks worse than NSI. They're going to monopolize the PKI, and that will be a shame, allowing all of the worst predcitions of Internet snooping and loss of anonimity to come true (in addition to pricing PKI out of reach of the little guy).
I mean, what are the two companies big products?
NetworkSolutions = domain name registry
Verisign = certificate signature
I always figured domain name registration was a more lucrative field than certificates...or am I missing something?
Then again, I still can't believe AOL bought TimeWarner and not the other way around...
There are several types of companies active in the inet-branch.
There are those that 'get it'; what should be free and what should be charged for, what is possible and what should not be tried.
Then there are those that are huge and that _don't_ get it at all; they are always running after the facts, propose ridiculous solutions to non-existant problems, producing hypes that they kill off themselves.
And then there are those that are lurking in the corner, getting big and bigger, that provide services that should be free and simple and controlable. In the absence of a world government, they take on the administrative tasks. They should be prohibited to grow, to make a profit, but they're not; they're just a company so they'll do anything, including cooperating with whatever agency of police. They are the big brothers of the future; always silently present, 'cos they own yer ass.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Actually, we just need to start supporting other
CA's. They're out there, but Verisign has managed
to make its name synonymous with Certification.
A fairly large competitor is Id Certify.
In addition to providing ssl certificates,
they're doing a lot of cool stuff with other
types of personal authentication, like a PGP-
enabled keychain fob that plugs in to your USB
port and certifies that you are, in fact, you.
In any case, while neither company is truly a
monopoly, NSI does suck quite mightily, and
Verisign is FAR from the last word on certs.
Hopefully, the anti-conglomerate consensus will
result in people making wider use of the
alternative sources for name registration and
certificate issuance.
-justin
Care to elaborate?
I can't see what possible good will come out of this. IMO, it's a recipe for disaster and will provide the Clinton administration (or the Gore administration, if he turns out to be Clinton's successor) with just the tool he needs to further his agenda.
I don't buy that. Clinton gets excited over a screensaver. TPIAW, clueless.
Personally, I like the ideas being floated elsewhere in this discussion about the USPS being an issuer of certificates or issuing numbers (for a fee) for "anonymized" postal addresses. Even better would be an international consortium (of which the USPS would be a part) that provides identity verification.
Oh, please! USPS can't even deliver the mail, which is their primary function. And how hard is that; it's got our address right on it. :)
In the words of Rick Moen of Silicon Valley, "But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong."
Dennis Miller, actually, and I am NEVER wrong; I'm just not right all the time. :)
It's a very dark ride.
If I am going to dislike Verisign id love to see more than a company buying another company and some rant's as a reason why.
I have yet to see one post that points out the ways Verisign has abused its monopoly status or would.
I like a healthy dose of fear as much as everyone else as paranoia will keep you alive
However.. remember you can be a monopoly as long as you do not stiffle competition. Sure this is never good to have more power centralized but is it BAD?
Someone show me how verisign is truly evil and not just an investigation to determine if they are or not.. and I will agree this is bad until then whats up? Everyone just knows something I dont?
JA
What are the other companies in the certificate market?
Does Verisign own key patents or is there another reason it has market dominance?
Which gets me to the point: would there be any way to set-up an open-source-like business model for certificates which could compete with Verisign?
--
He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.
I can't see what possible good will come out of this. IMO, it's a recipe for disaster and will provide the Clinton administration (or the Gore administration, if he turns out to be Clinton's successor) with just the tool he needs to further his agenda.
Personally, I like the ideas being floated elsewhere in this discussion about the USPS being an issuer of certificates or issuing numbers (for a fee) for "anonymized" postal addresses. Even better would be an international consortium (of which the USPS would be a part) that provides identity verification.
In the words of Rick Moen of Silicon Valley, "But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong."
--
--
We have fought the AC's, and they have won.
I think the number of domains is closer to 8 Million, which would put them at $280M. That's a decent business, but certainly not worth 20 Billion!!
Take a look at their fundamentals on quote.yahoo.com. They had sales of 220M last year, and Income of 27M. That's a 12% Profit Margin. Certainly not one of your high flying Internet stocks. And it definitely does not have the potential for exponential growth as some other Internet businesses do. Are we going to wake up tomorrow and find that 80 Million new domain names are needed, or 800 Million? I doubt it.
The concept of using DNS as a certificate distribution mechanism has been around for years. This would get over one of the major hurdles to PKI acceptance and implementation.
So, this COULD be a good thing... if it's done right. That is, openly.
But, I'm very concerned that this is not what would happen. Why would they pay 20B to speed open adoption in which all their competitors had equal access? DNS is too important to be used as a tool in someone's business plan.
This is all a result of the huge screwup where NSI was allowed to be a for-profit monopoly over DNS. ICANN should have went much further to correct this situation.
That merger closed long ago. It's now an unavoidable part of history.
When I heard about this I almost threw up. VeriSign is, without a doubt, the new number 1 enemy of the Internet. Network Solutions is not far behind.
To those who think they are getting away from this bohemoth by using other registrars, think again. They will still own the root registry database.
Both companies have appalling records on customer services and privacy. Both refuse to allow people to opt out of privacy intrusions (OK, VeriSign *say* they let you opt out, but they won't honor the opt out request). Both companies suck.
Stratton Sclavos is an Internet cretin, who has no place at the helm of any privacy, trust or Internet business, let alone at the helm of such an all encompassing one.
With all of these consolidations we're getting a new class of corporation. Some of these companies are getting big enough to directly rival the power of the United States government. In some ways, the new megacorps are already more powerful than the US, and certainly Bill Gates has far more power than Bill Clinton.
Watch for more megamergers coming over the next few months, and be afraid. Be very afraid. These will trigger a revolution of some sort in a relatively short space of time - 20 years at the outside.
I am glad that everyone here has passed economics 101. I wish more Americans had some kind of education in basic econimc theory, or, failing that, could just think logically.
MONOPOLIES ARE BAD FOR THE ECONOMY! Other then the obvious issues of freedom and privacy, having large corporations buying each other with made up money so they can monopolize services and drive up prices is detrimental to any business person that is not in the monopoly.
Since we know this already, I would like to publish a list of people that we should tell that we know this---the house sub-commitee on technology. "The subcommittee on technology has jurisdiction over all matters relating to competitiveness...antitrust, regulatory and other legal and governmental policies as they relate to technological development and commercialization".
Here they are. Unfortunatly, there e-Mail address are all different, some use first names and some use last (all are at @mail.house.gov , though), and their physical addresses are all in different buildings. However, you can reach most of their web sites at www.house.gov/(members last name). Subcommittee on Technology
The Honorable Constance A. Morella, Maryland, Chairwoman
Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania
James A. Barcia, Michigan**
Roscoe G. Bartlett, Maryland
Lynn N. Rivers, Michigan
Gil Gutknecht, Minnesota*
Debbie Stabenow, Michigan
Thomas W. Ewing, Illinois
Mark Udall, Colorado
Chris Cannon, Utah
David Wu, Oregon
Kevin Brady, Texas
Anthony D. Weiner, New York
Merrill Cook, Utah
Michael E. Capuano, Massachusetts
Mark Green, Wisconsin
Bart Gordon, Tennessee
Steven T. Kuykendall, California
Brian Baird, Washington
Gary G. Miller, California
Ralph M. Hall, Texas+
F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., Wisconsin+
I don't know if they will pay attention, but since we are still living in a democracy (for now), we might as well try.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
While it's true that anyone can create and/or sign
a digital cert., the big web browsers will kick some cool message about not knowing who the certifying authority is. This is a Bad Thing if you are trying to run an e-commerce site.
Certs. from VeriSign and Thawte are automatically trusted by the popular browsers and will pass the user through without even telling them. These guys are trusted because they try to make sure that the person requesting the cert. is who they say they are.
Well, great. In theory we can "trust" the companies the certify. But who's to stop VeriSign from deciding that only Fortune 500 companies need certificates? What happen's to the little guy who can't shell out the $350 US for the cert but still wants to do secure e-commerce or other cool stuff.
With Thawte gone, there is no real threat to VeriSign to prevent them from doing that. Maybe we should start our own CA (-:
Quick clarification: Entrust is now the #2 certificate vendor (behind the combined VeriSign/Thawte). You can buy certificates at Entrust.net.
Entrust doesn't resell Thawte certificates; it issues certificates that are chained to the Thawte root, but signed by the Entrust.net CA. In newer browsers (e.g. IE5) the Entrust.net root certificate is present so the Thawte root is not used. (Disclosure: I am an Entrust employee...)
This would make it easier for them to spam you. Forget buying mailing lists. They just write a program to send to address 10000, 10001, 10002, 1003, and so on :)
//m
Network "Solutions" has already been pretty much worthless for a number of years in several areas relating to domain names.
;-)
1). They make no attempt to verify the accuracy of information in a domain record (mailing addy, phone #, etc.)
2). They do not delete said record if it can be proved that the domain owner is spamming, or allowing spamming, or producing other behavior that's counterproductive to a smoothly-running Internet (yeah, I know... "smoothly?"). Worse, they make NO attempt to get the record updated if it contains obviously bogus info.
3). They don't (AFAIK) confirm DNS server change requests with the owner of a domain before implementing the change.
Whether this merger is good, bad, or indifferent where the 'net is concerned remains to be seen. To my mind, it's academic because I have no plans to renew my registration with NSI. I've already chosen one of their competitors (Domain Bank) that has every security measure in place that NSI lacks.
Perhaps best of all, their Terms of Service allow them to whack a domain if the owner spams with it. Now THAT I can live with!
Caveat emptor...
You are sorely mistaken. Do you actually know anything about the USPS' computer systems? I think not. For starters, there is not one, but dozens of computer "systems" that the USPS uses (most of which are enormous, country-wide installations connected by very high-speed networks). Remember, the USPS is HUGE, and has immense amounts of data to manage.
Secondly, they use some of the most sophisticated technology available. No, I will not (can not) give you details, except to say that it is a geek funhouse. Just because the USPS has been around a while and is a (quasi) governmental agency doesn't mean they're stodgy or not with the program.
but is it really worth worrying about? It doesn't cost us anything, and we have the most reliable, cheapest postal service on the planet. For the moment I'd rather use my time and energy into trying to change government and get worthwhile politicians in office.
----------------------------
I agree, smaller government is better. But truly, I have bigger fish to fry than to care about the USPS. The government has major issues to worry about before we start wasting our time over a minor issue which according to comparison to every single other postal service in the world, is already optimal.
Sure, there's an opportunity cost, but when no other government or private industry on the planet has matched the current system for efficiency, I really have doubts as to how much improvement is possible.
If you really think you could deliver mail for say... 25 cents a letter, as soon as I'm a multi-billionaire I'll give you an official offer from the SFDIA association. (the So Fucking Do It Already association. where we give you the funding you need, and you can attempt to patent respiration or vowels, or in your case, improve significantly on the USPS).
----------------------------
So I feel like I'm held hostage, and don't feel safe doing anything but borrowing the use of a friend's credit card (and prepaying him) to update the registration online in the most unsurprising and normal manner possible- because I think that if I do _anything_ unexpected, I'm probably hosed. For one, I don't think I can pay them any other way anymore. And if I expect them to _do_ anything they'll probably get it wrong.
If anybody has experience in successfully moving their domain name from NS please chime in here, as I don't feel I have a choice, and some horror stories I've heard seem like too much of a risk to take.
It's hardly anonymity since anyone, not just the Post Office can decode the Zip+4 code.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
This is actually what bothers me most about this deal. What could possibly justify this sort of valuation for Network Solutions? It's even worse than the absurd overvaluation of Red Hat and VA Linux (which is slowly returning to a more realistic level). Yes, they have a large share of a market that's only going to expand, but do they really have enough earnings potential to justify such a huge market cap?
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
In wake of all the goofy megamergers lately (of which VA's purchase of Andover is one of the most notable), it's refreshing in a way to see one that makes business sense.
People are learning that PKI's are primarily not about security and public keys, but mostly about dealing with the question of who owns the name. Once you've got that figured out, making a digitally signed certificate to prove it is relatively easy.
One of the big problems that VeriSign faced is that, even though they issued the certificates, they really had no control over the ownership of the name. Now they do.
It's extremely easy to imagine a "domain gold" service that includes both the domain name and the SSL certificate.
There's another possibility which may be even more intriguing. DNS security is rolling out at a very slow pace, and generally only provides protection against passive attacks. What you need to fix this are the root certificates for the TLD's, plus have them issue certificates for the actual domain names. I asked the DNSSEC people when they thought this would happen and they rolled their eyes. VeriNic would be in a position to just do it, though.
I think the main question is whether they smile upon DNSSEC or would prefer to push the X.509-based solutions (such as SSL) that make up their business now.
Certainly all very interesting, although I am worried as much as anyone about the concentration of power it places in the hands of one company.
LILO boot: linux init=/usr/bin/emacs
As nifty as it is, the DNS system is getting hopelessly screwed up by half-assed administration and bizarre legal meanderings.
So, one obvious possible solution would be an alternate form of name resolution, crafted with quite a few years of experience and hindsight - a DNS2, if you will.
Does anything like this exist? If not, is it being worked on? If so, how can we participate?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Isn't it clear to everyone that with control over commercial domains and secure transactions this merged entity plans to be positioned to control all of electronic commerce? "Sure," they're thinking, "there are other domain registrars and other trasaction vetters, but their names are so obscure they don't count."
Imagine if the Post Office, Federal Express, Airborne, and UPS combined with Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and American Express to decide who they would allow to conduct business and who they wouldn't. If you wanted to open a mail-order business, you'd only have two options: pay the POFEAUPSVMDAE consortium for the privilege of doing business, or go farm potatoes.
Fortunately, the proposed Verisign/NetSol chimera wouldn't have it locked down as tight as the analogy above does, but as Animats astutely inferred, they wouldn't pay 21 Gigadollars if they didn't see a sure thing. Let's just hope they don't go Guido on us and impose some sort of "protection" fee on either the secure transactions or domain name regsitrations.
I can see the fnords!
Um ... you don't know too many users, do you?
Users aren't going to do anything like that unless they have a bloody good reason, and using your web site instead of someone else's isn't likely to be one.
D
----
If you want to have your certificate recognized by most web browsers without pulling up a really, really ugly looking error message, I'd say Verisign and Thwate are the only games in town, because any other certificate signer will cause that to happen.
Truth is that I really hate this wierd certificate business. All I want to be able to do is use SSL - why should I have to pay someone $800 a year just so I can do that without causing my users to panic? Ugh. It's almost like blackmail.
Incidentally, an oddity: Although Thwate is now owned by Verisign, they have not yet done anything to their rates. So get your Thwate certificate before it's too late.
D
----
Err...
A single entity to control:
Good???
Are you kidding??? What are you smoking??? I want some too...
And if you call M$ a set of arrogant bastards how do you call a company that is under investigation for monopoly practices doing an obvious monopoly merger?
Next thing we see will be somoene "addressing" the existing insecurity of the DNS (which I admit exists) and requiring all nameservers to use sertificates. Actually this suggestion has already been done. And guess what will be the next thing to happen if Verising owns NS
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Setting up a new "open-source" certificate authority really just requires an outlay of cash to AOL (in terms of Netscape) and Microsoft in order to get their root certificates into the shipping browsers. If nothing else, now that Mozilla can ship with crypto, there stands the possibility that the root certificates could at least ship in Moz.
You have to remember that Versign does not issue secure certificates, they just sign them and for the more expensive ones, do a certain amount of investigation to be sure the person or company they're giving a certificate to is indeed the who they say they are.. Anyone can make a secure website, but browsers will pop up windows saying that the certificate is from an unknown source.
Ultimately an "open source" CA would need to take some steps to assure the public that they do some checking up on company's... Verisign basically puts their neck on the line everytime you enter a secure website, in that if the certificate has been forged it will all come down on them. They're a tangible company which can take a fall and have finghers pointed at them... That's quite different from the loose banded linux community. Not that the linux community is what it is in a bad way, but it does lack some of the accountability that brick and mortar companies have.
In the past technology was universal supported by the users before it was considered standard. Now the game isn't universal support but universal deployment.
.. better... free documnted and open sourced.. even better... but best of all ... documented, open sourced, and public domain... no clame of ownership whatsoever...
With universal deployment you get your technology so widely used that anyone NOT supporting it is issolated.. cutoff..
This is a bad situation... and with Verisign/Network Solutions it could get even worse.
In the past the best free solution survived and non-free solutions died.
If the protocal was free thats good... if it's free and documented thats better, free documented and implemented in free (as in beer) software
Documenation in source is more imortent than documenation in text.. documentation in both is even better...
Today you just make sure anyone who dosn't support you gets issolated. In this way you force your way in the market.
There is no boycott of a company that controls a market...
If this dose happen this may spell the end of an open Internet.
No new operating systems may join... You must use Linux, Windows, MacOs or Unix. Even if it's not narrowed down to one os.. thats not a good thing.
I don't actually exist.
I'd have thought people would welcome any change in Network Solutions. Judging by almost any previous story on them, it can only improve them, can't it?
11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000
The key difference is that the phone and power networks can be locally managed. A private mail system will have to be very integrated between regions. I don't think the result would be better than what we've got now. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Regarding 60 Minutes, do you think private corporations don't have theives and psycopaths working for them?
You, like many other people in here, seem to think that all of society's fundamental transactions are government regulated. Take a visit to your bank sometime and ask them if their wire transfers are government regulated (which is the most important type of "email" there is).
Dude, I write banking software. :) Every wire transfer is reported to the Federal Reserve. Heck, if I remember correctly, every wire goes through a Fed mainframe. The ACH network (aka direct deposit) is run by an independant organization, but the Fed has influence there as well. Most regulation is by a consortium of banks, but led by the Fed, whose leaders are appointed by the government. Besides, Congress has passed banking regulation. Laws to detect fraud and tax cheats, and fair lending come to mind.
Speaking of the Fed, there's another public institution that is effective and self suffucient. More evidence to the contrary that anything and everything "government" or "public" is wasteful and stupid.
Actually, the government does have it's hands all over the power grid and the phone network. True, it's all run by private companies now, but they are government granted monopolies, or at least have been through most of their history. There are price controls and regulation out the wazoo for that stuff, and for good reason, because both require a great deal of infrastructure that would be wasteful to duplicate, and both are critical systems that our entire nation depends on.
Besides, would you really trust someone like UPS or FedEx with official mail? I wouldn't trust UPS with anything critical based on the condition of the boxes I get from them. And do you really think they're going to charge the same rates to those in poor, rural areas as they do in cities? It will have to be subsidized, and/or highly regulated, just like phone and power. Is that what you really want?
Now think of it this way, based on the way they've handled the DNS system, would you trust someone like Network Solutions as your official guranteed delivery e-mail service and as your official certification authority? Both these services are need for legally binding electronic contracts, and they (as Verisign) are now well positioned to provide those services. To be legally binding, these services will be highly regulated, so the government will be invovled, whether you like it or not. Now, who do you trust more, Network Solutions, or the Post Office?
Why not, the government's got a monopoly on national defense. That's the biggest and most wasteful racket there ever was.
Besides, the NSA has its hands in the certification authorities anyways, so what difference does it make? At least as a public organization, we citizens have a right to oversight. As private companies, all we can do is threaten to switch to a competitor when find that their security is not up to par. Now, how do you find out when their security is not up to par?
(Interesting, with UCITA, it might become illegal to even test their security practices. Forge a certificate or find a security flaw, and you get sued off your ass or go to jail!)
Exactly. FBI, NSA, CIA, Verisign, Network Solutions, U.S. Postal Service. Which one of these has the most trustworthy reputation?
Who funds these audits? As a Verisign customer, am I authorized to conduct a security audit over their entire certificate operation? Even if I get every one of their customers to participate, short of a class action lawsuit, is there any way I can demand they comply?
Remember, the Mindcraft guys know more that most of us about web server benchmarking, but they still screwed up and there are still questions of conflict of interest. I can at least run their tests myself. I can't lobby my congressman for an independant audit of Verisign.
Of course, now that digital certificates have some legal weight behind them, they will be regulated. The government is already involved. I'd much rather such an essential public service be run by a public institution that is efficient and self-sufficient, and yet still accountable to the citizens, than by a corporation, accountable only to tort law and the short-term profit motive of its shareholders, that still has a quasi-monopoly and government backing.
You are refering to InterNIC and Network Solutions, right? Thanks for supporting my argument. ;)
There's a more recent article about Network Solutions, and everyone's favorite autocratic government band-aid, ICANN: http://slashdot.org /article.pl?sid=00/03/07/0713200&mode=nested
. For example, the company plans to use Network Solutions' massive subscriber lists to help supply buyer and supplier credentials for B2B exchanges and to complement VeriSign's various service-oriented businesses.
-- Virtual Windows Project
A single entity to control: more than 50% of all certificates. Actually, about 90% if their pending merger with forgot the name will not bite the dust. It is under investigation at the moment
The company is Thawte, and unless I'm mistaken, the combined company would control something more like 98% or 99% of the market. The scary thing is, I know some of the folks at various securities corporations down near wallstreet who are in favor of the merger, since having no choice means less hassle for them. I hate that mindset.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
This is a really good idea, except for one small thing -- the US Post Office holds no international authority. Why should (for example) France treat the USPO any differently than any other random organization? In fact, other countries might trust the USPO less than another random organization because it is affiliated with the US government.
But I like where you're going with this -- it makes a lot of sense. Perhaps if there was some sort of an international group, of which the USPO was one member, this would work. I don't forsee this happening, however, with the differences in crypto laws throughout the world.
Cthulhu for President!
(darren)
The great thing about this is that you could have more than one number, so you could give one to your friends and another to companies. When you start getting junk mail, you just cancel the number.
The USPS's profit, mentioned in other posts to this thread, comes directly from bulk advertising mail. That business subsidizes mail delivery to rural areas. It is junk mail that keeps postal rates so low. I can't believe that the USPS would provide a service that would directly cut in on thier profits, unless the money to be made on that system would offset the lost bulk mail business.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
The USPS would be an ideal place to base a public key infrastructure. They've got offices everywhere and are already set up to establish your identity for the other official things they do, so they could set up a key server infrastructure and allow users to add keys to it for a minimal fee (Say, $10 a year) and it wouldn't be too hard to guarantee that key as authentic, so you can know for sure that the guy you're talking to is the guy you want to be talking to. No one else already has everything in place to set this up so well nor are they likely to ever have a setup as well suited for stuff like this.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Yahoo News version of the story.
Read some of the history of the postal laws and you'll see that the gov't has handled the oost office pretty well. (See page 235 of this PDF from senate.gov)
I'm not sure how the U.S. gov't can carry forward this responsibility in the world of global email...
There are a few:
On the down side, dealing with NS was bad enough, having new management at the helm of the registration ship makes me dread the inevitable upcoming changes. I doubt that Verisigns interests are for the good of the internet.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
As well as product tying and predatory pricing, none of which exist here. Even reading newsclippings on the MS case would have told you this much.
Verisign is not a monopoly.
I can start up a competing certificate facility anytime I like.
I only get emotional when people fail to grasp that being deemed a "monopolist" in a court of law and somehow matching Webster's definition are two entirely different things. Try the law review instead of dictionary.com.
a monopoly is a company which employs such practices as simply buying their competition when their competition is ripe enough snip
Blah blah blah blah...this drivel in no way resembles what the courts determine as constituting a monopoly.
All you've told me so far is that a monopolist is any company that acquires their competition.
openSRS which is sponsoring domain registrars which are, in turn, selling domains for as low as $10 per year -- no kidding, they exist
Newsflash - you can get domain names for free through namezero. today.
Some points have changed though - firstly, the obvious automatic triggers to halt trading in case of catastrophe.
In other ways, things are worse - the public is much more involved in the investing process today, and most of them are following the herd in the worst possible, thus influencing institutional investors who might otherwise act in a more rational manner.
Even "value" managers are being forced to chase the "easy" money on NASDAQ by cusomters who demand to see high returns come hell or high water. The general public appears to have fundamentally misunderstood risk.
Added to which, as you mention, the preponderonce of consumer debt. This is indeed troubling, particularly when most Americans now have the capability to become debt-free. There isn't much you can do here - just try not to get burned when these basket-cases flame out.
We do not need Uncle Sam holding a monopoly on net security.
Of course, none of this will ever happen. Just let snail mail die off folks, that leopard isn't going to change its spots.
The best change in mail delivery of course would be competition - let Fedex and UPS deliver daily mail (it is illegal for them to do so now), and maybe you would see some changes.
They will certainly have string competition in this field. AOL will soon be an official registrar with almost limitless cash. They also own Netscape, so inserting their preferred certificate support into Netscape commerce servers is automatic. I would almost venture to say that Verisign is so outgunned by AOL/Netscape that their success is by no means assured.
There will be others. Register.com will certainly find a willing partner such as Sun or IBM who is willing to implement the missing pieces of the security puzzle - both comapnies market ecommerce servers that can be rigged to support their certificates as well.
Then of course, there is Microsoft. They can easily buy any of the blessed registrars outside of AOL, and their ownership of the mid-range server market assures them a huge audience.
With all of this probably competition, it amazes me how anyone can conclude that Verisign is somehow a threat or even a monopolist.
As for the certificate market, AOL will be able to easily incorporate certificates into the Netscape servers they control. Microsoft could easily purchase one of the other registrars, or do a deal with them to incorporate certificates into IIS. IBM, Sun, and HP all have the market presence to make deals to compete with Verisign.
In fact, I don't even see Verisign coming out number one in this fight - I see the deep-pockets of AOL using their ownership of Netscape's commerce server to muscle them out over time.
The fact that digital certificates are a standard means that anyone can implement a certificate authority.
I suspect that AOL will do just that and incorporate it into Netscape commerce servers. Oh, by the way, AOL will also be a "blessed" registrar just like NSI.
No they aren't. You're confusing the fact that they are the only major certificate vendor with monopoly status.
There is nothing stopping you from starting your own ceritificate business (there is an open standard for certificates) and competing against Verisign.
Of course - starting a certificate facility requires that you implement that standard - which is a easy feat for most large tech companies - and that you incorporate your support into web servers.
Both AOL (through Netscape) and Microsoft (through IIS) have large market shares in commerce servers, so they could easily do this.
Added to which, AOL is to be one of the "blessed" registrars, so they could easily counter every "threat" posed by Verisign....and in fact have much deeper pockets. Not only is Verisign not a monopoly, but their success is by no means assured against AOL.
The fact that no one has done this is not an issue of Verisign being a monopolist.
They have not engaged in product tying or predatory pricing.
I worry that today's markets faithfully mirror the 1929 boom. Then, stocks bought on margin were used as collateral to buy more stocks. Investors were buying with fake money.
Today, corporations are buying corporations with stocks with infinite price to earnings ratios - using fake money to make more fake money. If Amazon bought GM for all-stock, say, would that provoke a crunch where real value has to be produced to cover multiplied value?
A non-conspiracy, non-Marxist web site on the 1929 crash eludes me at present. For the simple history, see the Britt anica article on the origins of WWII. That suggests a contraction of international credit - a crunch to produce real money, to pay all the margin. That's more useful than the actual article on the Stock Market Crash.
The Dismal Scientist looks like an interesting site to explore.
Actually, our taxes n longer subsidize the USPS. It's actually profitable on its own, though I don't believe it pays taxes, which probably helps a bit. According to the financials on www.usps.gov, they made $600 million in 98 and in fact it appears they've turned a profit every year since 1995.
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Among other things, did you know that, for ordinary letters (and most other stuff too), the USPS is just about the cheapest major delivery service in the world? It's true. Yes, it's a bit slower than many other delivery services, and the utter lack of modern computerization doesn't help too much (there's a computer system in place, but it's ancient by today's standards). You certainly can't beat its price/performance; show me any other company that can deliver, say, a phone bill in three days for less than a buck, or even less than fifty cents. The last time I tried to send a letter via one of the private services, it cost me fifteen times what it would have cost via USPS, and it didn't even get there.
Private services do have their place. I use them regularly for larger packages. And I don't think snail-mail will be dying anytime soon...
For all its problems, snail-mail is going to stick around for a very long time indeed. I do wish the USPS could get its computer systems modernized (there was some talk about them doing a WebObjecdts-based intranet a while back; what ever happened to that?) But I don't see them dying, and I'm glad about that.
Now I can deal with one large, slow, incompetent company instead of two! Imagine the productivity improvements!
As the various articles have mentioned, in order to merge, the two companies first need approval from federal regulators. This may be our chance to force Network Solutions to live up to their legal obligations. As anyone who has followed the various stories about ICANN knows, NSI has been most uncooperative, even defying orders from the government. This has allowed them to maintain their monopoly, and keeps domain registration prices artifically high. However, in the approval process, companies under scrutiny often are willing to make concessions in order to be allowed to complete the deal. While I realize that this would require that there be some basis for suspicion of these two companies, perhaps the FTC could impose as a condition of the buyout that Verisign was required to cooperate with ICANN. This might not help much, but it could be one of our few chances to force NSI to open up their government-granted monopoly to the world.
Sam TH
Sam TH
AbiWord Developer
Of course, the possiblity does exist that Verisign (of whose corporate practices I know very little) will revamp NSI and make it into a company that doesn't suck, I don't think they are doing this to better humanity or anything like that. I'm sure they will make some changes to optimize NSI as a money tree, but few companies acquire others with the hope of making the customers of the acquired corp happy.
On another note, I don't really see why we all think Verisign is so trustworthy that it can tell us who to trust. I don't know how certificates work and whatnot, but can't anybody get a certificate? The purpose of a certificate is just to tell you that information you get is really from where you think it is. If getting a certificate is only a matter of money, who cares?
(note that this is not a troll, but an honest question)
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rooooar
Think about how much money 21 billion is. You could replicate the entire US Internet backbone for less. You could replicate AOL's entire system for less. And Network Solutions provides what, after all, is a minor piece of the system. It's like a steering wheel manufacturer selling for more than a car company.
We're seeing a frantic effort by Internet bubble companies to acquire before their idiotic market caps go away. And they are going away. VA Linux, for example, continues its screaming dive down from 320. It's at 110 right now, about 1/3 of the peak last fall. They got down to 101 a few days ago. It used to be that you didn't see drops like that for anything short of a bankruptcy.
Some of the points of this definition are barriers to entry, predatory pricing, and product tying. Verisign does none of these.
Added to which, they implement an open standard for certificates that you are free to implement yourself and compete with them. Hence there is no reasonable barrier to entry - in fact - most of the hard work has been done for you by the standards authors. If Thawte did it, so can you.
As it stands, NSI will soon have to compete directly against AOL once deregulation of registrars is complete. The motivation to bulk up is obvious.
Get used to more consolidation folks - most segments of the web market now have one clear leader (Schwab, Yahoo, Ebay, Amazon, Verisign) and these companies are going to use their currency to bulk up like crazy. Its a one-time process that happens in any market to weed out the players who really have no long-term growth prospects.
Change happens folks.
Verisign is already a monopoly, with their recent acquisition of Thawte, the only real alternative for signed digital server certificates.
Network Solutions is not an equal player in the domain registration business, since they are the maintainers of the database itself.
Combine the two and you have a company which is responsible for keeping key pieces of the infrastructure of a great deal of the Internet running (DNS and SSL usefulness).
That's the reason to be scared. Show me another company which comes close to this powerhouse; you can't, because one simply doesn't exist today.
now think about it for a second. we've all heard about how the Post Office wants to make themselves relevant in the 21st century. why don't they become an offical key authenticator. they are already used to dealing with huge numbers of people and are recognized as a trusted authority with special legal rights. tampering with the mail is a federal offense. becoming a key signer is a much better way to stay relevant than by giving everyone an email address. and their trusted status would lend creedence to the internet way of doing business.
Prop me up beside the jukebox if I die.