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RealNames Closing Shop

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the huge-surprise dept.

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."

1 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I didn't even know this was possible... by Ron+Bennett · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I get about 200 hits per month through via a keyword - it's a trademarked madeup word. Many people I suspect simply forget the .com part and then after seeing they're still being routed properly to our site due to RealNames, they use it more and tell others. So in this regard, keywords do have some value in regards to convenience.

    But as far as driving traffic, etc...keywords are generally a poor way to do it...keywords don't work the same everywhere...for example AOL keywords and RealNames don't correspond with each other...if RealNames had any sense, they should have gotten AOL aboard - perhaps they tried...but in any event, keywords lacked consistency and thus most companies, etc simply stayed with internet domain names - they're familiar to people, consistent for the most part, and much less expensive since RealNames also charged surcharges for high volume sites.

    So all in all, I'm glad to see RealNames fail...and it serves VeriSign right too - they're about the worst company on the face of the planet...heck, look at what they did to two decent services GreatDomains and Registrars.com after they acquired them...but I digress...