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Verisign Plans to Revive SiteFinder Advertising 'Service'

Posted by michael on from the think-of-the-consumers dept.

kiddailey writes "Claiming that their own independent examination of their controversial redirection service has found 'no security or stability problems', and that 'Internet users consider the service a helpful tool to navigate the web', Verisign has announced that it will give a 30- to 60-day notice before resuming the SiteFinder 'feature' that it voluntarily shut-down a couple of weeks ago."

6 of 370 comments (clear)

  1. Re:WWW != Internet by medina · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Not to mention the lovely timeouts one has to wait for...

    Have they addressed the issues of postmasters who can no longer handle mail to non-existing domains locally? (they have to send the mail to Verisign first, then handle the bounce, rather than relying on DNS). "Tweaks" probably won't fix this.

  2. I actually LIKED the SiteFinder service! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Why am I in minority on this one?!? I actually liked the SiteFinder service! Whenever I would mistype a domain name or was unsure of the proper domain name spelling (especially when dealing with foreign domain names) SiteFinder would offer me a bunch of valid choices. That was great! A LOT BETTER THAN A BLOODY ERROR PAGE!!!

    Aside from Verisign "destroying the www", why wouldn't a service like this be useful?!?

  3. ICANN has options by squiggleslash · · Score: 4, Interesting
    ICANN's decision to farm out the front-end of the .COM/.NET DNS (ie having independent registrars responsible for maintaining lists of their own customers) gives ICANN an option it didn't have a few years ago - it can have a second or third .COM/.NET DNS infrastructure set up, with the primary root controllers pointing at both Verisign's and the others.

    DNS queries would be taken at random from the three providers. The registrars would, instead of registering with just Verisign, register with all three. Any registrar that didn't would find its customers complaining about DNS resolving issues.

    And to prevent Verisign from trying to drop a spanner in the works by not reregistering the domains it controls, ICANN could introduce the changes slowly, having, say, two of the root servers pointing at the alternative providers at the beginning, with the others still pointing at Verisign's network. Verisign's customers, assuming Verisign tried to fight it, would get poor DNS service immediately, without it becoming unusable. Everyone else wouldn't. Verisign's Registrar end would thus lose customers fairly rapidly.

    Why would this benefit ICANN? Well, it's fairly obvious: by doing so, ICANN can easily simply suspend Verisign (or any other abusive DNS root operator) without negatively impacting the Internet. Right now, Verisign believes it can get away with what it's done because it has a monopoly on .COM/.NET, and has enough of the registrar market to be able to prevent a switch. ICANN cannot switch to an alternative DNS operator without the direct cooperation of Verisign, and Verisign has said in the past they wouldn't cooperate.

    If ICANN is serious, it needs to do something about Verisign's monopoly immediately. Because of the Registrar/Infrastructure split, it now has the capability of doing so. Rather than sending letters containing vague threats of action, it's time it actually did something.

    --
    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  4. It never ceases to amaze me by DuckDuckBOOM! · · Score: 2, Interesting
    how a company can commission an "independent" survey that yields exactly the results the company wants, regardless of the degree to which those results contradict common experience / knowledge.

    The second (article || press release) yields a clue as to how it was done this time:

    "As a heavy but non-technical computer user it has been extremely frustrating for me to encounter 404 errors. Naturally, they happen at the busiest times," said Roy S. Lahet, vice president of Planning for Mercy Behavioral Health. . .It is difficult for me to see a downside to this user friendly enhancement." (emphasis added)

    Somehow I suspect that the people who don't find 404s "extremely frustrating" and do have the knowledge to "see a downside to this...enhancement" weren't part of the survey. So 53% of clueless PHBs think SiteFinder "improves the Internet". BFD.*

    .

    * "Big Furry Deal." - Dogbert

    --
    Life is like surrealism: if you have to have it explained to you, you can't afford it.
  5. The day it goes up again by Wolfier · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm ready to run a background wget that surfs a random URL 10 times a second.

    Please join me.

  6. HTTP != WWW by ScottSpeaks! · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The World Wide Web uses more protocols than just HyperText Transfer Protocol. FTP resources (for example) are part of the WWW as well. This is why Tim Berners-Lee (whose definition of term is pretty darn authoritative, I'd say) took the trouble to include a protocol designation in his specification for the Web's URLs (not realising at the time that one day millions of people would find themselves having to type that awkward "http://" construct over and over).