RealNames Closing Shop

The_THOMAS writes: "The company RealNames, which tried to make a buck off of the domain name gold rush by adding their own layer on top of the ICANN system, is going out of business (Full story here). To review, the RealNames system is a browser plugin which redirects a user who types 'cookies' in the IE address bar to Nabisco.com. The reason for the closure appears to be the decision by M$ to NOT renew their agreement with RealNames which expires in June."

Comments

Re:I just use Google

[Economist]

And if you use Internet Explorer (yeah, let the flames come), you could download the Google Bar, so you should not even go to google itself.

For the curious: entering cookies in google and hitting i'm lucky directs to http://www.netscape.com/newsref/std/cookie_spec.ht ml

Good

[darnellmc]

I'm glad they are gone. Many names could not be purchased and their fee structure sucked - IMHO.

And to top it off they could not protect their customer database and compromised every one of their customer's credit cards.

I never actually used their service, but made inquiries in the past, for names that I found they would let no one purchase. Some common terms could not be purchased. Even inquiries required giving them a credit card number. And eventhough I never signed up, there was no way to remove my card from their database afterward. I did not know they kept it stored and when they were hacked I had to get a new card number FAST.

I hope no such service is ever made again!

RealNames founder sez M$ will roll out their own

[The Mutant]

On his private web page, RealNames founder Keith Teare sez M$ will probably integrate the functionality directly into IE.

Why am I not surprised at this?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion