Network Solutions Take 2

sirkin writes "Washington Post Technews is reporting that VeriSign is resurrecting the Network Solutions name with a new subsidiary responsible for domain name registration. It seems so eerily familiar."

Comments

Good Grief Charlie Brown

[airrage]

Whether you consider yourself a Keynesian, or in the old-clasical camp of economists, I somehow tremble at some industries inability to make a profit.

The registration of domain names seems fairly staid, and yet, common-sense would dictate that little or no profit could really be meagered from such a one-point sale business. Wal-Mart on the other attempts multiple low-cost sales, with a wide variety of products. Though I'm not sure of the ROI for Verisign, I have a feeling, once all said and done, it's less than ten-percent. As a another inidicator, airlines make five to eight percent return on their money (though probably that number is worse as of late).

So the question I pose is thus: if a business or industry barely breaks even, and that industry or business is crucial to the welfare of our nation-state, shouldn't the government monopolize that business for the sake of our well-being? The answer, unfortunately, is NO. Because no matter how badly a business is run in the free-market, the government would only do worse.

So when it comes to privatization of airlines, oil, or domain names (the free flow of information is becoming more central to our security), I applaud a business trying to be more competitive, trying to evolve, trying to find a better way to manage customers, even if they stumble in doing so.

Re:pricing for domain registrations

[Jace of Fuse!]

I manage three different accounts at Network Solutions and I can tell you it's nothing but a pain. I try to mess with it as little as possible because the system almost always craps out on me. If I change a password, the new password doesn't work anymore, and the old one seems to take some time before it kicks in.

On top of that, don't ever let your information in their records become obsolete. If they have a wrong e-mail account for you, you can pretty much give up seeing any use out of that domain until they get around to giving a crap (which is never).

It's been several months since I could get any replies or answers out of them regarding the information on one domain that I own, and it wille expire in April. If I don't have any control of it by then, I'll renew it with someone else that will give me some control over it.

Best quote:

[Greedo]

But in a 2002 survey of Internet address buyers, VeriSign found that 87 percent of them were familiar with the name "Network Solutions" and could identify it as a domain name seller ...

Of course, they don't say why their name is recognizable. Long hold-times, bad support, dubious transfer-away procedures ...

87% of Internet address buyers are also familiar with the phrase "bunch of crappy morons".