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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?
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.
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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).
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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?
Contains no opinion? Funny, I thought I expressed my opinion. As for my being such a Karma whore as to actually have the +1, oh well.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The problem is that Verisign (who recently paid a hefty sum for Thawte) now controls roughly 99% of certificate issuing. So, if you want to have an online commerce site, it will be just short of impossible to do it without involving Verisign to get a certificate issued. Something needs to be done about Verisign's monopoly on certificate issuing. I seriously do not trust one company controling 99% of anything security related.
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
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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 $800 a year just so I can do that without causing my users to panic? Ugh. It's almost like blackmail.
Incidentally, an oddity: Although Thwate is now owned by Verisign, they have not yet done anything to their rates. So get your Thwate certificate before it's too late.
D
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Err...
A single entity to control:
Good???
Are you kidding??? What are you smoking??? I want some too...
And if you call M$ 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
The problem is that they're both so horribly bad at customer service. Anyone who has dealt with either company has a horror story to tell. I can't imagine what they'll be like when they're both one .
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)
_________________
rooooar
As much as I hate "me too" posts.
So do I especially when they use a +1 bonus and contain no content or opinion.
That said what is so wrong with the merger? NSI provides domain names and Verisign provides e-commerce services and security. So it seems that the purpose of the merger is to create some sort of one stop shop for businesses to buy a domain, create an online (probably e-commerce) presence and secure it. What is so bad about this? It's not like either of the companies provide a service that cannot be obtained elsewhere so there aren't even any monopolistic overtones.
Personally I feel that the jack-of-all trades approach to doing business is very difficutlt to excel in...just ask the McAfee corporation who attempted to become such a one stop e-commerce shop only to start taking significant losses instead of focusing on their core competencies.
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.