Sometimes, Microsoft is Right...

We've run a number of stories about RealNames over the years. To our credit, Slashdot readers and editors have mostly thought that RealNames was a foolish and pointless money wasting exercise to create an alternate DNS system that is neither, well, alternative or compatible with the DNS protocols. But recently, due to some shrewd marketing on the Part of Keith Teare, the RealNames CEO, they've gotten undeserved sympathy by painting themselves as victims of Microsoft. It is my intention to cut this off before it goes any further, to engage in some review of RealNames business and why it was a good thing that they went out of business. If you are interested in reading my thoughts about this, read on... A quick review: RealNames (then Centraal) first showed up on the Slashdot radar in 1998 when they inked a sales deal with Pre-verisign Network Solutions in which NSI would sell RealNames along with their other stable of internet "products." RealNames were very much pioneers in doing ethically troubling things for money on the Internet. Specifically, they were the first company to make a business model around manipulating search results for money. They also were trying to replace Network Solutions then-monopolistic control of domain names (a laudable goal) with a monopoly of their own (not so laudable), with their RealNames "augmenting" the DNS system in the Internet Explorer Browser and within search engines with which they had inked sales deals.

Now many many users of Slashdot have expressed their dislike for search services that order results based on cash, and many of us don't use IE, so the question comes up: why should we care about RealNames at all? Why does the failure of some poorly managed, ill-conceived company warrant any space on Slashdot? Alternative root servers make for a better story, no doubt. I'm the first to agree that RealNames deserves very little of your time, but the story of RealNames has recently taken a turn that is both annoying to me personally, and worrying to me as a long time participant in the open source scene.

Keith Teare, CEO of RealNames, has tried to make it seem like it was Microsoft's monopoly power that made RealNames go out of business. Lets review: RealNames had a deal with Microsoft to provide the RealNames service to MSN and Internet Explorer, for which they paid Microsoft a fee, and in return they got to derive revenue from selling the RealNames to companies, so basically Microsoft was likely RealNames' sole source of income. Keith and his coworkers were very happy to tie their horse to Microsoft while Microsoft was willing to pull them.

I don't need to explain to the Slashdot reader why RealNames was a poor idea. It is something you feel in your gut. I mean, in the end if you're going to accept the consensus reality that is the domain name system, are you going to stick with the somewhat broken NSI/ICANN/Pick-Your-Favorite-DNS company structure? Or are you going to go to a completly left field, poor, expensive excuse for NSI like RealNames? If you are a company trying to establish a web presence, do you choose the system that everyone has agreed on and publicize your url "http://www.bobstigerrentals.com" ? Or do you put: "RealName: Bob's Tiger Rentals" in your ads?

To illustrate further: Back in the day, I bought the linux.com domain name for the then-VA Research (Now VA Software) from Fred van Kempen (And there was much publicity, huzzah). Four or five months after doing this, I got a call from James Ash at RealNames trying to sell me the Linux RealName. This was not unusual, as I'd get any number of calls trying to sell me anything from containers full of stuffed penguins to whole companies (I was the wrong guy for those calls ...) What shocked me was the price he thought we'd pay. My mind remembers it as a horrible inverted Ron Popiel style sale, with none of the charm of Ron's products. How much would you pay to control the "Linux" RealName for four years? You'll be all over MSN and IE! $19.95? $29.95? $39.95? Try 1 million dollars.

It was a lot of money then, it's a lot of money now. It was a lot of money for any business. I told him we'd get back if we were interested. I didn't get back to him.

This is the innovation that Mr. Teare claims Microsoft squished, his right to overcharge for a dubious product. While Caveat Emptor certainly applied in the case of RealNames, his claim that Microsoft, somehow, has some duty to continue to provide the RealNames "service" to their browser client rings false. And that is the point of relating this bit of personal history.

I have little interest in engaging in schadenfreude over broken companies and laid off workers, but I do take issue with Keith Teare's attempt to jump on the anti-trust complainants bandwagon. If it is his hope that by crying foul on Microsoft now he can derive some sympathy or some other unknown gain, he'll have to look somewhere else than here on Slashdot, especially considering those that have a valid complaint against the software giant. Even considering recent developments I can't find any sympathy for him or his company, a company that, in my mind, belongs in the same class as LinuxONE (the California, not the Korean, company) and Digital Convergence.

Comments

Live by the sword, die by the sword, or by MS

[Seth Finkelstein]

In one line, RealName's business model was to leverage Microsoft's desktop monopoly, into being a DNS monopoly. To be melodramatic, the problem is that when you act as a henchman for someone who is trying to Rule The World, never forget that the would-be world-ruler has no loyalty to you. Only to how you fit into the world-ruling strategy. It's a complicated and difficult task to attempt to Rule The World. When strategies change, the specialists recruited to implement the former strategies, will be gone. And so came to pass with RealNames.

They attempted to live by the Microsoft monopoly-sword, and now they die by the Microsoft monopoly-sword.

This is not, though, Microsoft necessarily being "right", so much as having failed in one Rule The World gambit, and rationally, cut its losses. That's not the same thing at all.

Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)

Realnames closure is hurting in asia....

[os2fan]

If the Register is anything to go by. the closure of Realnames is hurting people who rely on it to surf the net in their own languages (eg Japan, China). But the post is relatively silent on this matter.

I mean, Google is a good idea in the west, but in the east, it's still an english-language tool. And it's not just google: realnames was using the address line, so that {asian glyphs} were substutuded with {european letters}.

poetic justice

[g4dget]

The CEO of RealNames is experiencing just what people have been complaining about in the anti-trust lawsuit: because of Microsoft's monopoly, Microsoft gets to pick the winners and loser in the market. As long as Microsoft picked RealNames as a winner, this was really swell for them. Teare even went so far as to publically say that Microsoft was not a monopoly and that there were no problems with competition. Now that Microsoft has made them losers, he is whining about it.

This should be a warning to any company that bets their business on being Microsoft's favorites rather than on innovating and competing independently. The lesson is actually quite independent of Microsoft: it is a fundamental mistake to build your business on a relationship with a single corporate partner. It just happens to be the case that in the software space, in some areas, there is no other partner around besides Microsoft.

Re:Thank you, thank you!

[_Sprocket_]

To me, that why the story of RealNames on /. is worthy of mention; because of /., not RealNames.

I'd offer a couple other reasons this story was worthy of attention.

First, RealNames has shown up on Slashdot before. And as chrisd points out in this article, RealNames is a posterchild for dubias business strategies that involve shoving the Internet in to one's own private monopoly. It wouldn't be suprising that the ultimate failure of this company wouldn't show up as a followup on Slashdot.

Secondly, the recent shenanigans has opened up dialog on a great subject: Microsoft isn't always in the wrong. If the CEO of RealNames had posted on Slashdot, he would have been labled a troll. Posters didn't fall for the bait. They noted RealNames was a Bad Idea and Microsoft, for once, wasn't doing anything worthy of ire. I saw the article subject not as "look what evil Microsoft has done now", but rather "look at who this guy is claiming as a scapegoat".

Lets not get carried away. Microsoft does plenty to attract criticism. But to be fair - Microsoft should be criticized only when their actions ARE appropriate. Microsoft doesn't deserve to be roasted when some scam artist wants to jump on the Microsoft-illegal-behavior-awareness bandwagon.

Re:Missing the point

[_Sprocket_]

Keith, your belief in your former company is commendable in its own way - we should all believe in what we do. But in re-stating your points here, it seems like you're missing the point yourself. Let's go over your points and hazard a guess why they're not gleefully received:

Any reading of my WebLog at teare.com [teare.com] must lead you to the conclusion that the inability of DNS to support multi-lingual characters requires fixing, and that right now ONLY RealNames fixes this natively in the browser that is on 90% + desktops.

I am not familiar with this issue, but according to some of the posts under this article (and some excellent provided links) the issue is in work, and in fact some of the solutions are being implemented. Your solution may have provided a nice stop-gap now... but ultimately it was a monopoly in competition with the existing system. The entire Registrar game has been quickly moving away from single monopolies - with good reason. I'm affraid you're stuck in the past.

If you type "IBM Thinkpad" into the browser you will get an MSN Search result. Even if you do not like RealNames (its a free world) you have to acknowledge that ending up on the ThinkPad page at ibm.com is the right outcome.

That's a pretty easy call. But what if I type in the word "peppermint"? Should it go to peppermint.com (Peppermint Productions)? How about www.peppermints.com (Penguin Mints)? Or maybe www.altoids.com (Altoids)? Suddenly its not so obvious. Unless, of course, your company refused to sell a generic keyword. But c'mon... we both know it went to the first/highest bidder. And frankly, that makes your point pretty moot.

How you can support Microsoft tying the browser to exclusively Microsoft controlled middleware - and by so doing disable every language except English (7 bit ASCII actually) is baffling to me.

Look around. There's been grumbling about this practice (even replacing 404's with a MS search result). But it seems that replacing one monopoly with another is little to get excited about. The entire practice stinks. RealNames was just an interchangable part of the problem.

You're a business guy. Your baby was slaughtered. A lamb that was shocked when the pack it ran with decided to stop for lunch. But if you think you can gain support in this forum by simply pointing your finger at Microsoft, you've gravely misunderstood Slashdot's collective culture. And you've missed the real root of the complaints against Microsoft.