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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."
...at least with OmniWeb (and presumably other browsers) where I can set up my own keywords to go to a site rather than relying on someone else's based on what they paid.
I just use google and hit "Im feeling lucky" and I usally find what I need.
I mean, I feel sorry for the employees of another failing dotcom company, but really - I thought this was a dumb idea in the first place. If you need a plugin to remember how to get to your favorite web sites, then get off the 'net.
Hopefully they'll find something else to do that's actually useful.
University - a box of academia nuts.
Good god. $100,000,000 invested in the buisness plan of a company that produces absolutely nothing, the only possible appeal of which would be to allow the redirection of someone on a particular browser platform (who is too stupid to understand .com or use a search engine) to your site, for which you would pay them up to 500 a year.
Unbelievable. Thank reason that's all behind us.
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the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
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It has been. They're called domain names. They're supposed to make remembering hosts easier by not having to remember the numeric IP address. It's just some people have abused this system or used it incorrectly resulting in a less valuable resource for all.
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...
Yes I am probably being a bit picky, but seriously, using M$ instead of MS is getting really old. If M$ is to be the way we spell it then I suggest spelling Linux as [h4h4h4, I pwnz0r j00 suxxz0rz!1!1!]
*BSD should be: [j00 st00pid "h4h4h4, I pwnz0r j00 suxxz0rz!1!1!" n00bs! we pwn j00 4ll!!!11!111!!1!1]
This way it will be more consistent and easier to understand just which company or OS someone is referring to, thank you for your cooperation
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how the hell do I get to nabisco's site now?
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!
That's a silly argument; TLDs are quite often meaningful, and useful, as long as they're used correctly. Of course, in the rabid world of commercial entities trying to grab all mindshare, the usefulness of the system often gets trampled.
.edu and .gov), so those are obviously the most focused and meaningful.
.edu). This would even help the existing TLDs a bit, by freeing up namespace currently used for `keywords' for use by real organizations.
... and no, you can't have coke.net, because you're a pr0n-meister trying to leech off of users' innocent mistakes!' Based on what happened in Australia, I guess it's not going to happen though...]
Most of the (original) TLDs describe types of organizations so they're obviously the most useful when your site is that of one. Some TLDs contain mostly organizational host names (like
`slashdot' doesn't name an organization at all so naturally it doesn't fit well into the system.
The problems with TLDs mostly seem to be caused by the attempts to ignore them, trying to get around user cluelessness by using `.com' as a sort of `constant suffix for keywords'. This attempt to pretend that that domain names are handy keywords seems pretty hopeless (there's too much conflict), but I suppose people aren't going to stop doing it.
I wish they'd just allow domain names without TLDs for this sort of `keyword' usage, allowing the TLDs to remain for domain names where they're useful (especially
[Of course, I also wish the DNS admins would enforce some sort of `reasonableness', e.g., `no, you can't have coke.net, you're already coke.com!
We live, as we dream -- alone....
Not quite. Check out www.teare.com. Has the full story.
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?
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