At 3/23/01 5:21 PM, William X. Walsh wrote:
>"Tucows' domain name registration service, Domain Direct, will also be
>incorporated into the new browser, offering users the ability to easily
>register and manage domain names. Users can search for and register a domain
>name anytime by simply clicking on a link in the button bar. They will also
>be able to set up multiple e-mail accounts, forward domain names and manage
>their domains."
I see William's just going to post the facts and let others do the
ranting. Sheesh. I guess I'll have to do it if nobody else will....
I realize that Tucows had Domain Direct running before starting OpenSRS,
so there's probably little to be done about its existence. But if Tucows
is making new deals, it bothers me greatly that Domain Direct would get
an advantage over other resellers that comes directly from being a
division of Tucows.
OpenSRS makes a big deal out of the fact that unlike other registrars
(such as the one mentioned on this list last week), they don't compete
with us. However, that's a convenient fiction that just doesn't hold
water. Domain Direct *does* compete with us, and they are part of the
same company as OpenSRS. Every domain sold through Domain Direct via a
click of that Opera button is one less potential sale for an OpenSRS
reseller.
The fact that Tucows is selling domains retail under a different name
seems to have lulled people into believing there's no conflict: if Domain
Direct was called "OpenSRS End User Domain Registration", I bet there
would be a big brouhaha.
I know this stuff is subtle, and there are many arguments that can be
made here. Someone will point out that I, too, could pay the Opera people
and get a link in the Opera button bar. Of course, I probably couldn't
afford to do so, and neither, I suspect, could Domain Direct if they
didn't happen to be owned by a company that has something Opera wants.
Maybe it's just my tough luck that I'm not owned by a portal company, and
that's capitalism for you; I certainly can't fault Tucows for trying to
make a buck.
But that's the whole point. Tucows is just trying to make a buck, and in
this particular case they could have done it two ways. They could have
made a deal to put a link on that button bar that took people to a list
of OpenSRS resellers (or a random reseller), or they could just choose to
link to Domain Direct instead.
Why they chose as they did is somewhat irrelevant. Sure, they make at
least three times as much money per transaction with Domain Direct, but
maybe they can justify the decision totally aside from any financial
considerations at all. Still, there *are* financial ramifications of this
decision, and these work out to the benefit of Domain Direct/Tucows and
to the detriment of OpenSRS resellers. Some would say the end result is
okay if the decision was well intentioned, but I don't like the fact that
a conflict happened at all.
There's a myth that due to carefully constructed institutional firewalls,
etc., THERE WILL BE NO POSSIBILITY OF CONFLICTS between OpenSRS resellers
and Domain Direct, as if Domain Direct were in a blind trust.
As we can see, that's not true. THERE WILL BE CONFLICTS, even
unintentional ones, where Tucows has an opportunity to decide whether to
offer a lucrative advantage to Domain Direct or to all OpenSRS resellers.
And if Tucows keeps Domain Direct running, there will be more. It doesn't
matter what Tucows intends; the very nature of selling both wholesale and
retail leads to conflicts. It's a long-standing business issue, and
unfortunately many companies that try to maintain both retail and
wholesale channels eventually lose the goodwill of their resellers,
usually to the detriment of both parties.
The only way to surely avoid people thinking you're screwing them due to
a conflict of interest is to avoid the very possibility of conflicts
happening in the first place. As long as Tucows runs Domain Direct,
that's impossible.
Maybe there's no way around it; it seems like every registrar competes
with their resellers. So be it. But most of the others aren't doing what
Tucows is doing: selling retail under one name (and spending
money/resources promoting that channel) while selling wholesale under
another name with the statement "we focus exclusively on the
'business-to-business' market". It's, um, disingenuous.
At least we can all be honest about it: Tucows sells domain names, both
retail and wholesale. Their retail channel competes with many of the
resellers who buy from their wholesale channel, and sometimes they make
choices that favor one over the other.
If that doesn't bother anyone, that's fine. Bothers me some, though.
--
Robert L Mathews, Tiger Technologies
[Standard disclaimer... I generally like OpenSRS and there's no need to
tell me to go somewhere else if I disagree with some policies... we spend
the most effort criticizing the ones we love... etc. In fact, while I've
got the space, a tip o'the hat to OpenSRS for fixing some o' the
outstanding bugs today.]
