Slashdot Mirror
RealNames CEO Talks Back
jasoncart writes: "Keith Teare, former CEO of RealNames, has updated his homepage with his opinions regarding his the companies downfall. Obviously he's annoyed as he has lost his job, but he makes some good points about Microsoft's monopoly - 'Microsoft seems to be playing the role of the referee who decides whether any innovations succeed'"
This all sounds like sour grapes to me.
Not that I blame him, and not that he's not completely without merit here, but I don't really think RealNames had a viable product to begin with (as several of the comments last time suggested).
If anything, I think this company failed to adapt to changes in technologies.
And so it goes.
If search wasn't so cheap that companies compete to give it away, we'd need something like this. But we don't.
Would you like some cheese with that whine?
When you play the game of working with powerful monpoloies who are known to destroy companies and to unlawfully use thier influence, you should not be any more surprised about them doing the same to you than you would be if you took a canibal to you to a desert island.
That's especially true when a well used and Free alternative to your product exists and is in wide use.
- Serge Wroclawski
he runs his own domain, but the dumbass has a HOTMAIL account! what a dork
Realnames did not mean much to me, in fact I thought what they did was just lame and was just for money. It sucked. However, M$ is never fair in bu$ine$$, they must have _estimated_ that before.
Btw, do you know that most of the pages in microsoft.com domain disappear and reappear in a different url? Most of the links to pages in MSDN got lost. (Even the pages found by Google.)
Their business plan was to make money off Microsoft. They failed to please their primary client and lost their business. Now they are out of business.
.COMs, its just silly.
Now they are blaming Microsoft for their own short sightedness.
Microsoft has no obligation to keep these people in business just for the sake of keeping them in jobs.
Their weird naming standards didn't make much sense in the first place, with the crash of the
Somebody needs to call this dude a whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaambulance!
calling realnames an "innovation" is a bit of a stretch.
all realnames had was a database that paired together words with webaddresses. this is not innovation. this is novelty at best. save me the sob story about monopolies and start working on real innovation. had it not been for the monopoly of microsoft, realnames would never have gained any kind of recognition in the first place.
-c
he built a company whose product/service apparently was not internet based (meaning, using standards like dns, etc), and rather, was wholy dependent upon just *one* other vendor's platform/service to such an extreme that users couldn't install it upon that platform/service themselves as it was simply guaranteed to be integrated for a fixed time period. We are supposed to feel bad because his company didn't have a contigency plan? They never thought about writing a plug in that would allow them to operate immediately for other browsers, and possible as a contigency in case of a falling out with MS?
No one would feel sorry for a hardware vendor that made hardware that would only work for Dells, and then went other because kingston/micron/western digital, etc could do it for less, and Dell went with them when it was time to renegotiate the contract.
ostiguy
s/honor/honour/
Sounds pretty much like what happened to Loki Games.
Contracts written during the boom which returns to kill the company now. I wonder how many of the dotcoms died because of that kind of deals.
When I want to find RandomCo online, unless they're a seriously huge company I don't just guess at randomco.com. That's not reliable enough. I've also long since ceased to visit directory sites to look up RandomCo. What I do instead is go to Google, type in "RandomCo RandomProduct" and find it immediately. This is infinitely more applicable to documents that are not sponsored by huge corporations, given the corporate dominance and limited range of the DNS hierarchy.
RealNames didn't even have a shot without Microsoft's dominance of the browser market, so Teare's parting shots at Microsoft (while very accurate) smack of hypocrisy. Dollars to doughnuts RealNames loved the fact that there was a single company to deal with in their bid to propagate their technology.
This company was obviously the epitome of efficiency, since they only need 79 employees to keep the name server running.
I'm sure it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that RealNames couldn't pay their bill. "Uh, yeah. We know we owe you $25 million but we don't have that much money. How 'bout $5 million now and we'll make payments of some kind. No, we're not going to change our business model or anything. Um...No, I don't know how we'll manage to make enough money in this dead economy with the same business plan that failed to generate adequate revenue in the good old days. But if you do things our way, you'll make $200,000,000! I don't know how but it's a really big number."
If he truly believed his product was ground-breaking cutting-edge technology, he should have partnered with other companies as well. Depending on Microsoft as your only partner does not make good business sense. Had he made deals with other vendors, RealNames would have some source of capital to fall back on. But since he suicided by depending on Microsoft, his company is now no more.
If Bill Gates had a nickel for every time Windows crashed... Oh wait, he does.
It is quite clear this is just usual MO of microsoft in action: Let someone build something up, then take it over. Mark my words, Microsoft wants to take the Keyword thing over from AOL. Why should AOL/TW get $300,000 for "travel" when it sould be in Redmond. Look to IE 7 to have mandatory Keywords.
Sounds like a bitter excuse-maker who is jealous about the success of others.
Are you talking about the RealNames guy or a typical slashbot?
Microsoft was the only one willing to use your crappy "product". Then they realized it was crap, and decided to stop using it. It's not even like most stuff where they buy/steal/copy it, they just didn't want it anymore because it was stupid.
Free Mac Mini
Do I really trust the opinion and intelligence of someone who uses a HOTMAIL account for correspondance?
disclaimer:
i've never used aol
but i've seen alot of commercials where you here soemthing to the effect of:
for more info go to www.goatse.cx aol keyword 'goatsex'
if this is the case, im not sure i really feel sorry for this guy, i think any schmuck could have thought of this.
-- john
but he makes some good points about Microsoft's monopoly
/. have to be so painfully biased? I understand that "it's in italics" so it was the submitter who made this statement, but /. is posting it so therefore they are behind it. This really takes a lot of credit away from your site.
No he doesn't. This has nothing to do with MS, and everything to do with a failed/flawed concept. Why does
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
'Microsoft seems to be playing the role of the referee who decides whether any innovations succeed'
Innovation? RealNames == SmartTags? Referee? You put all your eggs into one basket, and when you lose one customer you go out of business?
You amerigoons need to lay off the crack for a while.
If MSFT decides not to renew their contract with Realnames that's their business. If Realnames had any intellectual property worth a damn someone else would step in. The fact is Google has made Realnames' technology irrelevent. This dude is just pissed because he wasn't able to IPO his shitty company and make bank before the bubble burst.
And wake up with fleas. What he tried to do was out-micorsoft Microsoft at their own game, which is changing internet standards in proprietary ways.
The web doesn't need this service, so why should this company flourish? See ya.
Now, Bill Bliss - who runs MSN Search and was until recently in charge of the RealNames relationship, has in the last few weeks been moved to "Natural Language Platforms" and is charged with developing a variant of our system. The browser is now back under Microsoft's control and it is possible that - having learned much from RealNames - it will develop its own version of our resolution service.
0 5128).
seems, nomather how bad the company may be, quite unfair to me. And this quite confirm one of my previous postings (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=32467&cid=35
If at first you don't succeed, then sky diving definitely isn't for you.
he could have linked his homepage to the realname "slashdotted."
four-oh-four
At the end of his discussion, he lists the email addresses of important folks at MSN so that the public could write and ask them to rethink the deal. I don't understand why he would ever want to do this. Did he really like being in business with them? Doesn't seem like it, but he's asking us to help him get them back.
If I were him, I would just be happy that I didn't have to deal with their tactics anymore.
It's like DNS being controlled by a single company who charge what they like; there was no reason for the company to succeed. What do they really offer over DNS?
But hey, let's blame MS for quashing innovation. If Microsoft had set up this scheme, everyone would be outraged that they were trying to take over from the DNS system. Ah, bollocks.
I wonder if his business dealings were characterized by the same level of professionalism as this little stunt?
I particularly like the "I testified on Microsoft's behalf when I stood to make a boatload of money from them, but now that they've cancelled that arrangement, I think they're stifling innovation" bit. Pretty telling, IMHO.
Cheers
-b
1. Come up with lame idea.
2. Jump in bed w/ MS
3. Wam, Bam, Thank you 'Mam
No pity here, I'm afraid.
Mike
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Good point this thing about Microsoft being the referee... Only if they had chosen IETF instead of MS as their partner...
When I use Internet Explorer (which is not very often), I install Google's GoogleBar on it. This is a little toolbar on the browser where I type in a word and get a google search.
RealNames could do exactly the same thing, without paying millions of dollars in cash and 20% of their stock to Microsoft.
Not much real sympathy from me. Apparently he only thinks M$ is a greedy monopolist now that he himself has been screwed. Doesn't seem to have complained when M$ was raping Netscape, Staq, Novell, ... I guess as long as he was getting along with the wolf, getting a few crumbs that fell off the table, no complaints.
Nope, not much sympathy from me.
A friend's idea for a startup 5 years ago never got off the ground because at least two vulture capitalists refused to fund, on the grounds that if it became sucessful, M$ would jump in, make an offer we would be literally fools to refuse, and the VCs would not get enough return on their investment. I had long since been avoiding anything M$, just because of their nonethics attitude, and the friend was a real M$ junkie. Woke him up a bit. Maybe Teare will wake up a bit. Maybe others will wake up a bit.
Infuriate left and right
There's a saying: "If you choose to dance with an elephant, you can only stop when the elephant wants to stop." It is conversely true that if the elephant stops, ain't nothing you can do to get it to dance.
If you choose to base the entire success of your company on the whims of a company like Microsoft, then don't be surprised if the whims of Microsoft don't go your way. Microsoft will do what's in its best interests, and that often doesn't coincide with the interests of others.
I take exception to Teare's comment:
In this case the widespread use of the browser and its absolute requirement for our system means that Microsoft's decision has resulted in innovation being stopped. The only naming technology in the world capable of allowing non-ASCII characters to be used as web addresses is being killed at birth - before it succeeds and becomes "out of control". A small private company is being denied an audience - not because of money - but because of fear of losing control. If Microsoft wants to become a major player in internet platform technologies it will have to overcome this fear. What is shared cannot be controlled.
Microsoft denied his company nothing that wasn't legitimately its to deny. Microsoft chose not to renew a consentual agreement between it and RealNames. There is nothing wrong with that. It's the basis of a free market.
This is hardly an example of Microsoft attempting to stifle innovation. If Microsoft were buying their company, then closing the business, maybe. If Microsoft were writing incompatibilities into their code, maybe.
Microsoft opted to not engage in further agreements with RealNames. Too bad for RealNames. Get back up, brush the dust off, and find a business model that doesn't depend on the good intentions of Microsoft.
My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!
Why _should_ Microsoft renew a contract with RealName? I still don't understand it. In this free market, if a company feels like it can do better by itself rather than contract work out, why should it contract the work out? On that guy's homepage, he talks as if it is RealName's _right_ for MSN to use their service. Maybe they want their own keyword system, or they feel that it is inferior. To tell you honestly, it's a pretty stupid concept anyways and I don't see the future of the internet going toward that paradigm. There are lots of dot coms whining about their right for other companies to use their service. If RealName didn't have much of a business model (which they didn't), how can they survive? And MSN's justification is correct; the internet is moving toward a Google type system, not a "keyword" type system. AOL already provides a service like RealName did and it only works well if you have ownership of the browsing software. RealName didn't own IE, so it was prone to getting left out in the rain like it did. They should have saw this coming.
Is it microsofts fault that they don't want to include support for a product thats not worthy NO!
1) Party enters in to agreement with MicroSloth
2) Party can not pay Microsloth what they agreed to and provides a note
3) Party proposes alternate options to original agreement and MicroSloth decides against the agreement because it is not financially appealing in the long run
Hrm...they made what seems like a smart business decision without breaking any law or taking advantage of any loophole.
I don't see the issue.
RealName didn't own IE. They copied a pretty basic feature from AOL.
Now AOL is shifting to Netscape. AOL has a business with their Keywords. Are we to expect now that AOL will implement keyword features in the netscape browser, and also try to get beyond AOL users to generic internet users with the same consumer leadware?
This illustrates the problem with technology: it is only valuable if you can build something that is not easily imitated or replaced.
If you hire the ten sharpest people around and you take a year to develop something and then stand still, your competition is going to have no trouble catching up, even if it takes them a little longer or more resources. This is how many popular open source projects such as GIMP and OpenOffice are surviving. They've caught up with the real thing; not entirely, but to the point that they're good enough for a number of users.
Of those 80 people at RealNames, how many were driving technology forward? Did their entire technology consist of a database mapping keywords to URLs? Three people at Microsoft could probably do that--and scale--in six months.
The page mentioned that the Microsoft contact got moved to the Natural Language group; maybe MS is coming out with technology that allows you to type natural language queries instead of having to know the exact static keyword. Now that's technology that is not easily imitated or replaced, and it's already here in one form: the Search Assistant in XP.
I feel sorry for the employees of RealNames that have to find jobs in this economy (which is hopefully picking up!), but it is not Microsoft's job to singlehandedly sustain an unsustainable business, and based on the web page in the article that's what was going on.
One side note: If RealNames had acquired a patent on their "technology"--the kind we all love to hate--they could have survived if MS is planning on replacing it and not just ditching it altogether.
When he loses, he blames the devil. This is total shit. These folks could have made it by working with all while they were headed up. But, they (he) was too greedy for that. It is their own fault, not MSs. MS's nature is the scorpians.
The whole RealNames business strategy was an attempt to create, market, and profit from an additional and artificial layer in the whole DNS system. There was no need for it and since RealNames couldn't make a flawed business model work this guy starts crying M$ monopolist foul?!?!
PULEEZ!
Come on Keith Teare (founder of RealNames). Grow up! You climbed into bed with M$ because their majority ownership of the browser market was the only possible way to make your rotten egg fly. Now that they're turning their back on you, the crying starts. Just accept the fact that it was a flawed idea, born out of greed during the domain name gold rush and move on.
And good luck to you.
Ya Sure! You Betcha!, The_THOMAS
Jesus, this guy get in bed with Microsoft only because Microsoft illeagally stole 80% of the browser market.. and gets bit.
Cry me a river.
If you deal with jerks, don't expect them to not be jerks in the future.
Plus, this twit had a patent on thist stupid "invention"
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
billbl@microsoft.com (Bill Bliss)
jkrass@microsoft.com (John Krass)
zigs@microsoft.com (Zig Serafin - Corporate Development)
murrayv@microsoft.com (Murray Vince)
Sounds like time for a lil slashdot mailing =)
the companies downfall
the company's downfall
Please, at leat have correct spelling/grammar on the front page.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
Like IBM for instance?
Of course IBM are now A Good Thing but the only difference is that they had the money needed to hit back.
Time for some political will to sort this mess out.
i havent heard of this until i just loaded up slashdot.
I put on my robe and wizard hat.
Without the MS monopoly on browsers, it would have had even LESS chance of success.
As much as I'd like to see something besides DNS used to locate websites... because I think there should be no more new TLD's, and the system should be left as-is, to force the world to come up with a better way... realnames wasn't that solution.
Their entire business plan was to make something just good enough to get noticed by M$ and sell out to 'em for a couple of mil.
Like that's real ambitious ain't it?
Right now I'm sorry I didn't take the job and that they never got noticed before the VC money ran out, but that's mainly because of Bin Laden ruining my life, career prospects and my (old) neighborhood.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Someone has got to get me a copy of this dictionary all the Microsoft people use where "innovation" == "junk".
I don't suppose it ever ocurred to him that their idea was just plain stupid and little more than an attempt to skim money from those foolish enough to pay them.
The reality is not that Microsoft pushed them out of business... the reality is Microsoft was propping them up by implementing this junk in their browser. And now that MS isn't going to prop them up anymore, they're history.
So thats what these people were doing.
It was also necessary as what they where selling, was worthless.
They betted on fear. That some corporations and organizations would pay for first time dumb internet users who would just enter a word and expect to find exactly what they were looking for, as if everything consisted of monopolies nowadays.
The guy's supposedly ticked at Microsoft because of Microsoft's monopoly position, but he's using Hotmail for his e-mail account? Way to get back at M$.
Instead of a new tld..
how about a new record type for websites? A record that includes both an IP address and a port.
That would rock.
Can anyone name a single company that got in bed with Micros~1 that didn't later get attacked/sabotaged/destroyed by them in some way?
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Need I say more?
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
Hint: If you make a product that targets only Microsoft software, and then Microsoft decides it doesn't want to pay you anymore and you go out of business, it's probably not Microsoft's fault, it's probably your own lack of forsight.
Its just the same old broken record. It was only five years ago when RealPlayer went into "partnership" with M$ to extend Real's innovation with streaming media and lo-and-behold, eight months into the deal M$ pulls out citing all sorts of difficulties and problems and four months after that *poof* Windows Media Player is launched with M$'s own proprietary media format.
Doesn't anybody remember those old movies where the guy makes a deal with the devil, only to get burned later on?
If you ask me it's their own fault if they're going to fall for M$'s tired old shell game.
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
Sometimes it's cheaper and easier to get people to *give* you their technology than it is to steal it.
IP is the asset, people are free agents.
Then...
MSFT recruiting would be a positive message to employees.
A positive message doesn't pay the mortgage. Thanks guys. You're wonderful people.
This perfectly illustrates the non-future that W-4 employment is becoming. Oh, and for all you boardroom-apologists: this happens ALL THE TIME. Don't even try to argue about it.
I wonder which of these managers are free agents. While we're at it, if people are so "free" why do they make the hiring process more grueling than becoming an astronaut.
It's sickening.
Point #3 as to why MSN is moving away from RealNames mentions the hostility that .Net My Services was received, and how Microsoft is moving away from creating basic infrastructure services. Especially when said service appears to offer a mechanism to control what users see on the Internet. They specifically mention if RealNames became extremely popular(120M entries), this would be greeted by even more hostility towards Microsoft.
So it's interesting how the slashbot editors have tried to spin this as a negative, as this is exactly the type of responsible attitude that they have previously desired to come from Microsoft.
Well, only if there's a point to doing so.
Excellent question.
If you already know what you want to do, maybe we should begin with that.
Yes. We should.
OK, well, We aren't going to continue to bet on Keywords
MEETING ADJOURNED.
Don't stand there and dance for quarters. Pick up your stuff and leave. Sell to buyers, not skeptics. Bill 'em for your time too. They could have sent this by e-mail. This kind of arrogance is designed to do two things:
Don't believe the hype. The only way to negotiate with arrogance is to close the door, while it still belongs to you. Meeting adjourned. ^^
Can anybody tell me what this is supposed to mean?
-- The best way to accelerate a computer running Windows is at 9.8 m/s^2.
that is business, and that is what you get for dancing with the devil. Rugged, worn and torn the machine marches on, with your employee's no less. . tough break but its a holiday in cambodia.
Rule #1 when dancing with the devil: don't ;->
Go to http://www.google.com/preferences, and you can choose from among dozens of languages to search in, including 16-bit languages.
They were paying MSFT? MSFT will be pulling their assets (tech & people)? MSFT wants to re-do DNS, etc.?
There are people out there who want to help MSFT do this?
This is quite chilling to me.
The aol keywords are shit....... just take the .com after somesite.com, and you get your keyword.
On this subject, I have to agree with Microsoft.
RealNames was just not that great of an idea, and it is one of the ideas being cleaned out in the post-bubble economy.
I'd say that RealName's problem isn't Microsoft at all, but rather that their technology isn't part of any standardized protocol or specification. Had it been, it would (perhaps) have been implemented as a standard feature of web browsers.
The situation was now that they was absolutely dependent on having this kind of deal with Microsoft. It seems to me that this was a big flaw in their business plan to begin with.
Actually, from my experience with them, most of those 79 staff are employed to ring up people like me and repeatedly try to peddle their dumb idea, no matter how many times I told them where they could stick it.
I have had exactly the same scripted cold-call telephone conversation with these idiots twice within an hour. Any company that behaves like that deserves to crash and burn imho.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
RealNames will not be the only victim - there's a whole ecosystem that stretches all around the world that Microsoft is turning off. CNNIC in China, Forval in Japan and other companies in Belgium, Holland, France, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. oh wait, did I mention the company in Finland??
The whole concept behind RealNames was doomed from the beginning. Clearly he is mad at MS for not renewing the contract, but to tell you the truth, Im surprised he ever had a contract in the first place. I never understood what advantage they offered, and I dont think anyone is really surprised by the failure.
I would really like to hear from MS and any other companies that might have purchased the RealNames services, to try to understand what they might have been thinking.
I suspect that it was simply a case of signing up, just because they didnt want get left behind on something.. Clearly, that was not a valid concern....
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
When you create a company that relies solely on another company to generate income, you CANNOT BLAME that other company if they do not re-negotiate a contract with you.
Of course, we all should have learned this lesson already.
So yes, Kevin Teare, it sucks that Microsoft has a monopoly, and all that other shit -- it's a shame your ENTIRE BUSINESS MODEL relied on that monopoly. If the entire consumer market was shared, evenly, between a dozen commercial and non-commercial browsers, well then, maybe you could've carved out a niche (though I think your product is worthless to begin with, for reasons that have already been stated).
It's all funny, in the end, because I think if my grandmother typed "cookies" into IE and was taken to nabisco.com, she'd be amazed at how far technology has come in her lifetime.
-NeoTomba
"During the past 2 years Microsoft was GIVEN 20% of RealNames stock and $15m in cash guarantees during 2000-2001. "
What for? So Bill Gates could wipe his ass with your stock in the morning ?
that and the fact those things annoyed the hell outta me, if you type cookies it should goto something like cookies.com, not whoevr pays the most..lol
The Truth: There is no string:)
'Microsoft seems to be playing the role of the referee who decides whether any innovations succeed'
Huh, I sometimes have the same impression about international politics....
For example:
- 'a nation' declaring who's terrorist and who's not
- 'a nation' turning its back on international justice, the geneva conventions, etc...
- 'a nation' declaring itself innocent, despite known facts, and demonizing whatever seems in their national intrest.
Stop whining losers and swallow the load offered to you when the 'freedom fighter' defending HIS kin (imagine that) strikes you.
Think about it: You are with us or you are against us. Think about some of those 'innocent' allies you are siding with.
This idea was really mine, but Keith Teare stole it. We fought over this many time during the first year. I woke up one morning and realized that it was just stupid so I told him "You can have it!". Yes, Keith still pissed me off. I finally decided to contact Microsoft for revenge. A week later, Microsoft cut him off. He's a crybaby! He deserves it! LOL! I am so glad it did not happened to me!
Keith Teare wants us to email 'zig'? For great justice?
What you say!! Someone set him up the bomb!
-Erik
If you don't want Microsoft to referee the success or failure of your innovation, then don't create innovations which depend on marketing and implementation deals with Microsoft for their success.
RealNames was a marketing ploy, taking advantage of Microsoft's dominance above actual internet standards, and exchanging that monopoly for material gain. The fact that it failed is a testament to the capability of standards over proprietary schemes, and is hardly an example of the evils of Microsoft's monopoly.
The evils of Microsoft's monopoly is the reason RealNames existed in the first place, not the reason it was torn down.
Kevin Fox
From Kieth's homepage: "The .NET process and Visual Studio .NET both demonstrate good vision and an awareness of the responsibility to build tools and applications on top of the Internet as a Platform."
.NET is in disarray, and is in in the midst of a complete strategic overhaul.
While, in other news, Microsoft VP Jim Allchin admits
Interesting dichotomy, that.
Kevin Fox
The story is quite simple - the guy had a loan from MS. The loan came due and he couldnt pay it back.
So he started offering delayed repayment plans. Microsoft accepted them for a while and then they stopped. Well nobody is required to accept delayed repayment plans. Its their money after all.
So that guy tries to hide the fact that his bussiness failed by saying that Ms refused to accept his "innovations". Well the market refused to accept his "innovations" too. His bussiness did not succeed.
And as far as the innovations go lets be realistic here. All he did was try to hijack domain names. I am actually glad he did not succeed. I dont want some private co connected to microsoft in control of the naming system. At least icann pretends to be community governed.
How do I search for this one?
There are more than 100,000 customers including many well known ones like IBM, Xerox [who made RealNames partner of the year last year], EBay, Mattel - who have Keywords on every Barbie Box, and many more.
....
What can you do? Probably nothing.
I think that there is something that people can do.
Create their own name tool.
It seems to me that there are enough 'big movers' in this process that a consortium to re-install a naming process into IE is possible. Not only that, but it could be done in an 'open' manner such that the same naming mechanism could be used for IE, Netscap, Mozilla and any other browser that was interested in doing so.
Yes, this might require that realnames restart it's process, to a certain extent, but they will have to do this anyways if the company is to thrive. Microsoft is *NOT* necessary to this. They were the best way to get the process kick-started. Now that people know what realnames is capable of, it's possible to now take this to the next level -- but without any fealty payments to Microsoft.
This could be the death of realnames, or it could be a new beginning.
If realnames really wants to take on this task, one of the first things to do would probably be to create an add-on/plugin, and put some add hooks into the links created by real-names such that people know where to find the new extension. Then people at various large sites would need to put links allowing people to find the addin as well.
Time is short, but the opportunity is as large is the problem.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Hmmm, I've personally come full circle on searching versus the categorization approach. I think this has mostly to do with the simple fact that categorizing stuff is expensive, and thus needs more revenue to sustain the service.
And that requirement usually results in more ads to be thrown in. Which means, weeding through more and more inappropriate hits as time goes on. I've wound up once too often on a vendors web site whose product I have already eliminated from my shortlist.
Thus, the success in attracting advertizer revenue is precisely what does a service in for me.
Frankly, if Google went subscription I'd buy it to the exclusion of all other search engines, provided my money prevents me from seeing any paid-for links.
Bert Driehuis -- All I asked was a friggin' rotatin' chair. Throw me a bone here, people.
Funny that he had no problem with Microsoft while he was making money. You definately didn't see him protest at all.
Think about it, some guy comes up with "disconnected" version of AOL keywords and calls them "real names". Then goes and tries to sell it, finally seducing Microsoft, promising everyone will soon forget what "type in www.reallystrangeandlongdomain.com" is and replace it with "type in really strange and long into browser's address bar". Of course the whole idea failed, because people who need (and use) keywords instead of address without searching do use AOL :) Those who are capable of using search engine and typing addresses themselves do not use AOL and don't need the real names as well...
Hyperom.com
I liked RealNames. Especially because it worked.
I'd type "? Windows Media Guide" into my address bar and get the site for it, because I could never remember the link and didn't want to favorite place it.
Typing in a search ? $SEARCH usually yielded the RealNames keyword of what I was looking for. This was especially useful searching for band web pages where the band's web site and name don't necessarely coincide.
With the release of an API for the Google database, I'd like to see MS license it and convert addressbar "? $SEARCH" searching using MSN search to using Google search-it'd be a ton better and still do the same thing.
Plus if MS dropped it, google wouldn't go under.
This reminds me of the theatrical play "Faust" where the main character sells his soul to the devil in order to advance his standing in life, career, love etc. In the end the devil comes for his soul...
In ASCII, this means I have no sympathy with this man. Microsoft has a long record of screwing it's partners and to be honest, these people should know better. Microsoft was caught stealing code by Apple, the makers of Softimage and others and regularly works "with" "partners" in order to "embrace and extend" the product once they have sent the former "partner"(e.g. IBM) off into the wilderness. There would have been hundreds if not thousands of people in the business world that would have warned him not to trust Microsoft, IF he would have bothered to stop checking his bank account every 5 minutes and listend to what they had to say, but greed is a powerful motivating factor. Microsoft could not find find any partners for it's hailstorm/passport strategy for a reason: No one trusts them.
This man would have had a better chance of long term success if he had worked with the opensource crowd to get the technology accepted.
I can't even get past the first paragraph. He defines the internet as the browser, and the browser as (clearly) IE. If I wanted to "innovate" a network application, I certainly wouldn't stuff it in a browser...
Yeah, Microsoft has taught Satan new tricks.
But, RealNames was one of the dummest f*#king
ideas and companies to ever get funded.
Keyword: STUPID
Slashdotters defending Microsoft? And getting Modded up for doing so? Have I stepped into Bizarro world when nobody was looking?
At the end of his rant, Keith references this. I think this sums up that he was always an enemy of innovation.
-- Ken Kinder ken@_nospam_kenkinder.com http://kenkinder.com/
... how fast everyone forgets that Microsoft hasn't always had a near monopoly on the browser.
When RealNames was founded, Netscape still held a hefty chunk of the market, and there were still others chomping at the bit to get a share. RealNames had a browser plug-in for Netscape and plans to get themselves integrated into all the browsers (whether this was good for the 'net or not is a different subject.)
Teare's point is that Microsoft could bitch-slap them around because there was no longer competition. If MS had only half the market share, they couldn't dump RealNames and replace it with their own version since the rest of the browser makers wouldn't go along.
With the demise of Netscape, Microsoft no longer had any reason to continue to do business with RealNames. Nor do they have any reason to do business with any other company that makes a product that could potentially become a standard.
This is a _classic_ example of why Microsoft's monopoly supresses innovation and growth -- classic in the sense you can never, ever prove the negative theorem that MS caused something not to succeed. Would these guys have been succesfull in a fair market? Maybe, maybe not. Would Netscape? Maybe, maybe not (although even the angriest Slashdotters are starting to forget the actually timelines and buy into MS revisionist history.) Microsoft will always point to these examples and say "not the best product and management screwed up a few times - don't blame the fact we have a monopoly for putting them out of business."
Its this sort of subtle effect that MS's monopoly has on the market, and the one we are most likely to overlook - yet in the long run its the one that will do the most damage.
+--------------------- You idiot! I told you we were facing the wrong way!
I agree that RealNames is an outdated concept,and can be integrated into existing search engines in the way Google did with ther ad-per-click payment program without having to "outsource". Heck, even I have coded a keyword search algorhythm that generates ads based on searches, and I don't consider myself that sophisticated of a programmer.
Pity. RealNames at one point had searches "Naked Dancing Llama" lead to the NDL page at no charge -- which proves in my mind that there had to be some true geeks employed somewhere in the mess.
Chris
He's right on one thing though, Innovation is desperately needed on the DNS system.
The keyboard I'm currently using has two keys on it which print symbols that are not valid in DNS names. These letters are used quite frequenetly in three of the languages that I can write in. (for the record, that's Ñ and Ç - I wonder if slashdot can cope with them?)
It *is* an annoyance when people find they cannot put the names they wish to use, in some cases the names they've been trading under for many years, because at the time, the designers of the system never imagined that the non english-speaking world would want to join in. Hell, Spain can't use its own name in its main language, España, as a valid domain name, and if you think of the number of companies with names along the lines of "American Autos", "US Robotics" and "CompUSA", then you start to see how limiting it is to the large number of spanish companies that have similar naming schemes.
Saying to spaniards "well, don't use a squiggly n, use a plain one" is not really a viable option - the ñ is a separate letter in its own right, and sometimes words are already in existence in the dictionary that just have an n instead of an ñ, and the meaning changes completely. As an example, the word año, meaning year, could not have as a substitute the word ano, meaning anus.
The same goes for ç in french and catalan, and I wouldn't be surprised if similar problems occured in places like Norway and Turkey, which also have commonly used letters not in the ASCII range.
It's even worse for companies and people in countries with completely different alphabets, such as Greece, The various middle-eastern countries, Russia, China and Japan. The translations between these languagese and the latin alphabet are not always well-defined, and so a domain name can't be thought abotu mnemonically, becasue you're not always sure how those sounds tranlate into a character set that you won't necessarily be very familiar with.
And it's not like we don't have a sensible upgrade path available. With the standardisation of the UTF-8 character set, machines can slowly be upgraded without requiring any changes to support the exisiting domain names. New names will not work globally for a while, but you can be fairly sure that most places outside of US, Canada, Britain, Oz, and NZ will be very quick to upgrade once software is released.
I'm not saying that the realnames software was good, but it did have that very useful trait for foreign companies, and it could possibly have become the defacto DNS for a lot of countries because of that.
I just hope the IETF address this issue before Microsoft step in and do their own thing. The last thing I want to see out there is a Microsoft-owned and -run DNS.
He didn't complain when he had the monopolist on his side, though? If course Microsoft is the "referee". The fact that he didn't see that was a sure sign that his company would fail.
Personally I was never in favor of RealNames because they represented a polution of data integrity with regard to source material agailable on the net, but I my opposition was based on my concern that the business would success in their stated goal and cause this damange. I would not be concerned if the company was inheredtly doomed to failure.
It's disappointing that Microsoft weilds such power that they can, with a single business decision, cause the ruin of a company, however it's good to see that Microsoft's own potentially highly successful forray into the internet-as-a-platform space is not gaining the full support of the company. This division within the company allows other providers to keep their foot in the door, and particularly may be the saving grace of JAVA. Only time will tell.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
I love your comments- you tool....while you were giggling at nscp your company went under by incompetent mgt and shitty products...
...
.. DNS sucks and needs an overhaul
You my friend should stop giggling
you tool
btw: I agree with this guys take on DNS
and you will find that despite your earlier efforts
to not paint yourself as anti- Microsoft is at odds
with all the subsequent points you make.
Microsoft is not losing their way as you seem to
imply . they never had one, except eating a company
once it's usefulness was finished.
What made you think you would be different from
the long list of previous MS Roadkill.
Your efforts not slam MS smack more of the pragmatic strategy of not wanting to piss off
the 800 lb gorilla in case you have to business
with them again.
Have the courage of your conclusions and just come out and say they are evil bastards.
You will feel much better.
PS: Your whole business revolved around laying down a layer of commercial plaque in the arteries
of the Internet.
Uneeded and undesirable.
Can't say I am sorry to see RealNames bite it.
as Dennis Hopper might say.
I use Google and have never needed a keyword
ever.
Keywords are for f*cktards.
Oh the irony...
On the other hand, MS's referee position didn't seem to bother him back when MS decided that RealNames should be bundled with Windows (I'd say "with IE," but they're one and the same, just ask Microsoft) instead of any of the other companies that were doing the same thing RealNames did. Far as I know, RealNames was the last company playing in that space, after their MS alliance forced the rest out of business.
But back then, that was good.
The tables turned.
Now, that's bad?
He's right, it sucks, but still...
Somebody call the guy a waaaaambulance.
Build stuff. Stuff that walks, stuff that rolls, whatever.
Had you bothered to do the most cursory investigation of Microsoft you would
.pdf document shows RealNames as Go Inc.
have found that this is one of their common business practices.
The funniest thing? This isn't the first time a company named GO has been Microsofted.
The
During my tenure at GO Corp (in the mid 90s) we developed the PenPoint gesture-based object-oriented operating system for handheld computers. Microsoft entered into a relationship with us, did a knowledge transfer, and then began to compete with us.
If you're too damn lazy to check up on Microsoft's past behaviors at least don't name your company GO (or so it seems).
I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there. -- Richard Feynman
It's not the point, if it is innovative, the fact that theirs was a growing business shows, that at least it was a good business idea.
The point here is, that Microsoft wants to control everything they can, if they can't they'll cancel support. As a result of this Microsoft is not a good business partner to have for startups: if you don't have success, well, then they'll dump you (who wouldn't, no problem there), but if you are successful then it might either be against microsofts interests to follow up on that technology, or, if they think it's worth following up, they'll want to do it themselves. In both cases they'll kick you in the back, because if it is to be done, then it's them who want to do it.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
This guy testified in favor of M$ at their DOJ trial about how they aren't monopoly wielding thugs. By his own admission they killed his company because they couldn't control his technology, even if they wanted to and didn't want to give him control of the name space. Let's face it this guy wanted a names monopoly of his own so he piggybacked the Microsoft browser monopoly to get there, zero competition for browser keywords. Microsoft is replacing their technology with a system where a URL which fails initiates a search on the Microsoft search engine, so they have "100% control". It's clearly a case of eliminating the competition through abandonment as their only route to market. I don't have any sympathy for this guy in light of his testimony. He didn't give a crap when Microsoft were destroying other companies with proven illegal methods. Now when they come for him he complains, he deserves it more than Netscape et.al. I do think something should be done about this though, it is a clear case of Microsoft destroying competition by tying their own search engine to their browser and killing RealNames to do it.
Those are great links, and I recommend people read them.
I disagree strongly. If the French want to have their own private Internet, fine. Same for the Spaniards. This is not a troll.. hear me out.
My feeling is that the Internet is best served by standards that all (or most) people can use and understand. Having multi-language support is antithetical to this goal.
Please don't call me an English-only bigot. I freely admit that I know no other written/verbal language. However, I truly wouldn't care what language was used, as long as it was the univerally understood standard.
Perhaps one language is too few.. maybe 3 or 4 languages would be better... IF everybody (or most everybody) could use them. I don't want the Internet to become segregated.
Find a standard language, ANY language... Use it exclusively in a global medium. This promotes global communication and prevents people from having their own little private "Internets" where the rest of the world can't understand a thing they're saying, much less search and browse through their "private world".
Right now, English is the standard, right or wrong, for better or for worse. Whether or not English should be the standard is a different debate to me. My point is that we should have a standard language and maintain it in order to keep the whole thing all together and on the same (web) page.
If you want to reach out and communicate with people across the globe, you have to have common ground. On the Internet, that's langauge. So, on the Internet, España is "Spain".
Vortran out
Knowledge is like ignorance.. too much can be just as bad as not enough.
I hereby call for a moratorium on the word, 'Innovation'. We should throw it out for a few years and let it fester on the same heap as, 'paradigm shift', 'dot com', and 'interactive'.
It's dead, Jim. I've never witnessed the moment of death of a website before.
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
For someone who seems bitter about Microsoft, it's interesting that he still uses their free mail service... :-)
Which amounts to just another second-level namespace. It's no different, in principle and application, from creating a top-level domain called ".realnames" except that you can't delegate it any further, because RealNames had no concept of hierarchy.
Oh yeah, with Unicode-style names. That's nice but not very interesting to most of the Western world.
Whoop-de-doo.
Is it just me seeing this, or was Keith Teare totally oblivious to the utter uselessness of his "technology" to the Western market?
RealNames had the stupidest "technology" ever. It is just like a "Jump to conclusions mat".
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
- IBM PC-DOS was shrugged off as having nothing special to offer
- Novell DOS was considered clearly superior, having some features MS-DOS lacked, but was dismissed as for bleeding edge users & hotdogs only
- MS-DOS was recommended because it would be the standard for which all software was optimized
None of these mentioned the Windows 3.1 error, tho Windows was certainly used as a test application.The cheat was an error message, by the way. When the beta version of Windows 3.1 (named Bambi) discovered DR-DOS it complained ...
Here's a report of a Microsoft memo explaining the practice.
You can Google Search the rest if curious.
That is hilarious, I mean in a really sad way if you lost your job or anything.
There was an attempt to create a standard way of talking to keyword systems. See CNRP, RFC 2972 and recent (May 3) approval of CNRP protocol as Proposed Standard. Just in time!
Folks - RealNames was a decent idea for a small company and does provide value for foreign keyword navigation and is a decent competitor to a search engine for it's alternate form of navigation. This fact is validated by another competitor: AOL's keywords. Sure, you don't need a big company for this at all. But you do need distribution and partners. Don't think the Microsoft subscription deal that was negotiated was the best for RealNames. Remember, M$ owns part of RealNames. Maybe this is conspiracy, maybe this is insider knowlege - do you think Microsoft resisted leaning on RealNames with it's monopoly powers? Imagine things like: Sell us more of the company for cheaper, sell us your interlectual property or else...we will compete with you directly and withhold IE distribution. Why does M$ kill a company that it invests in? Because it can make money in different ways: bringing the technology in house and killing competition. It just has to duck that patent in a new way and M$ lawyers will be happy to defend it. All this story shows is that RealNames was weak and they dealt with the devil.