AOL & NSI To Team Up

kettch wrote to us with a recent story on CNet about AOL and NSI teaming-up to offer "co-branded service". If I remember correctly, at one point AOL was going to compete with NSI in offering domain registrations, so it's interesting to note that they have decided to play nice with each other.

Comments

Oooops.

[Mr Krinkle]

Janet Reno today announced that while she was busy battling for the safety of all against the evil Bill Gates, she has allowed another monopoly to form. But since the government no longer owns any of the .gov extensions she is unable to email any of her minions to go after this new monopoly. On a side bar Mr Case of AOL has changed his email address to king@aol.gov. He has also warned if Bill Gates and any other home ISP does not cease and turn over all accounts they will be forced to lose their .com name.

Re:Oooops.

[warpeightbot]

In a related announcement, Our Lord King Case announced that he would immediately initiate a hostile takeover of MCIWorldComSprintUUnetTheInternetAsWeKnowIt. He expects to have subdued the entire Internet by the end of the Federal, err, Imperial fiscal year on June 30. Once the American Internet and its global subsidiaries are conquered, His Majesty expects to complete World Domination by the Feast of Bacchus on 26 December, after which he intends to go after Mars, probably some time in April when everyone has sobered up.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled Slashdot.

News from CNET

[Shin Elendale]

Today, following news of AOL and NSI's teamup, Steve Case has made an official public announcement:

"Thank you all for being here today. I am officialling taking over the internet. All non-aol approved websites will lose their domain names effective immediately. My new address will be the White House as I've sued the governments of the world out of existance for all their .gov sites (which I own) and other infringements upon my legal rights. My new title will be 'The King: Lord Case, May He Live For A Thousand Years'. That is all, thank you."

Bill Gates and his new company, LinuxSoft, declined to comment.
In unrelated news, The two Microsoft halves continue a long and ugly legal battle to untie Windows and decide who gets what. Unfortunately, the current judge was found dead today of what looks like a self-inflicted knife wound.

-Elendale (no longer will I flame AOL mindlessly, I will now make fun of them with fake news posts)

Re:News from CNET

[rwade]

Well, old Stevey's gonna have some trouble getting the internet from it's inventor, Al Gore.

Re:Great

[FyreGryffon]

Ah, very good. Take a company like MS (which has a clueless user base and an even more clueless development team), and combine them with a company like AOL (who has a spectacularly drool-prone user base, but had enough sense to hire sharp technical people).

The user bases combine. The companies annihilate one another in a vast cluon-anticluon chain reaction. We're left with nothing but a bleating herd of people almost capable of operating a mouse without benefit of a "For Dummies" book.

None of the survivors can successfully program a VCR or a microwave oven.

All die.

Oh, the embarrassment.

AOL already a registrar

[Lextext]

AOL is already an ICANN-accredited registrar, with the ability to register names in .com, .net and .org. Aside from the ability to register names in ccTLDs, this co-branding deal seems to add little of value.

The only thing I can think of is that AOL has not been able to make the registration process work, so it's turned to NSI for help. The AOL domain name registration page has always been closed to non-AOL members, so I don't know if it was actually offering this as a service prior to today's announcement.

It's a curse!

[G Neric]

actually, isn't it a Chinese curse? "may you live in interesting times" Hemos, people all over the world read slashdot. Be more careful about what you say.

You've got mail... and a domain name!

[BMIComp]

I'm happy now. Now I can buy a domain name when using AOL, Compuserve, or even when using WINAMP!

This sounds like another anti-trust suit to me. Not only does AOL have the largest number of IM users(and own another large one!), one of the largest ISPs, and a whole bunch of other monopolies... they're going to probably buy out the whole domain name process. When I heard of this around a year ago, it was five different companies that were going to be able to this, one of which was AOL. Although, its very concerning to learn that AOL will have an exclusive agreement with NSI.

This begs the question, can AOL buyout the process of selling domains too?

Re:You've got mail... and a domain name!

[DHartung]

bmicomp asks:
>This sounds like another anti-trust suit to me. Not only does AOL have the largest number of IM
>users(and own another large one!), one of the largest ISPs, and a whole bunch of other
>monopolies... they're going to probably buy out the whole domain name process. When I heard of
>this around a year ago, it was five different companies that were going to be able to this, one
>of which was AOL. Although, its very concerning to learn that AOL will have an exclusive
>agreement with NSI.
> This begs the question, can AOL buyout the process of selling domains too?

In a word, no. Domain registration is controlled by <a href="http://www.icann.net">ICANN {Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers)</a> by international agreement, which has final authority over most TLDs (Top Level Domains). Any qualified company may become an accredited registrar, equal to NSI. Most important is the ability to become a reseller; many ISPs now do this for a small fee, and the end-user has no idea whether their registrar was NSI, CORE, or any of the other dozens of accredited registrars.

This is why NSI is partnering with AOL. AOL -- which is <a href="http://www.icann.org/registrars/accredited-l ist.html">already an accredited registrar</a> -- has a guaranteed audience larger than anyone else, and NSI needs to continue pushing their brand name; otherwise they'll disappear into the morass of equivalent companies selling a commodity.
----

I can see it now...

[Wntrmute]

"You've got a domain name!"

"Register your domain now, and get 300 free hours of AOL!"

"With Instant messaging, email, the Internet, and domain names, no wonder it's number one!"

But seriously this bothers me... Why do I forsee this:

A few years down the road, my company, (an ISP) calls up to find out why their domain has not been renewed on the company credit card...

Phone Rep: "AOL-Time Warner-NSI-General Motors-RJ Reynolds, how may I help you?"

Me: "Yes, I was calling to see why my domain, isp.net was not renewed."

Phone Rep: "Ahh, I see that you provide Internet service through that domain?"

Me: "Yup, have for several years now."

Phone Rep: "Well, we have adopted a new domain registration policy for ISPs. Your domain will now cost a percentage of your annual profits. This number will..."

Me (interrupting): What?!?

Phone Rep: "Yes, it's our new policy. Now, if you get 1 OC-3 through us, your cost falls to a 25%, but if you get 2, then..."

Me (interrupting again): Are you kidding me, I'm not giving up my profits for a domain name!"

Phone Rep: "Well, you don't really have choice, see. We own the system. We won't let you transfer the domain. Now, if you give each of your users a copy of Instant Messenger and our Time Warner movies-on-demand service, you cost drops to a mere..."

Me: I wonder if anyone wants to buy an ISP?

-Wintermute

Complete Press Release Mentions More

[great throwdini]

Checking the cnet story against the release posted at AOL's corporate site, seems that other aspects of this agreement weren't covered by cnet:

• "...AOL will promote a number of VeriSign services across its business channel."
• "The AOL/NSI co-branded sites will also provide access to a variety of services tailored to small-to-medium sized businesses. This will include the opportunity to register for free listings in the Netscape Business Directory, which will include data from NSI. The Business Directory is designed to help users quickly locate, research and do business with companies on the Web."
• "NSI will also distribute a co-branded version of Netscape Instant Messenger, enabling businesses and consumers to initiate online, real-time communications with business colleagues, friends and family."

The same (unedited) press release is available at NSI's corporate site.

Might as well get all the information, no matter how trivial.

*shaking head...*

[DrEldarion]

eek, did anyone else misread that and think it said that AOL and the NSA were teaming up? Now that would be scary...

-- Dr. Eldarion --
It's not what it is, it's something else.

Re:*shaking head...*

[Duxup]

"The person your spying on got mail!"

Screw AOL

[ekapus]

When will the federal government get off Bill, and start barking up AOL/Netscape/Time Warner/The World's tree. You want to talk about monopolies, and dangerously large companies? Now there's one to talk about.

Ok here look..

[rcarsey]

Has anyone had a similar problem:

You fax an authorization form to NSI to get your administrative contact changed. Yet, you never hear back from NSI?

You send an email inquiring as to whether or not they even received the fax, yet you never receive a reply?

You attempt to call NSI to speak with a human, yet you receive a recording. Not the usual recording, but rather a recording telling you all Cust. Reps are busy, and to call back tomorrow between 7 and 9 am... WTF

Re:Ok here look..

[doogles]

For years, I figured I was unable to properly operate a fax machine. Out of the five times I have been required to fax NSI a form (whether it be a RNCA, or simply a nameserver-change approval), each one has required a followup call .. and a repeat fax directly to the representative.

One on transaction, I actually had to fax my RNCA in *THREE TIMES* before the deal was finally closed. When it finally did, it happened without my knowledge; I never received an email alerting me of the situation, although I was told I would.

I think you're lucky to get the "call back tomorrow" recording; I've always gotten a busy signal, believe it or not.

I'm not the kind of guy to just bash a company for no reason, but NSI truly has been a joke over the past few years ... and the scariest part is they haven't been getting ANY better. Same old, same old.

I guess I'm the lazy one for not looking in to and using any NSI's competitors.