At the risk of igniting further significant debate on these issues, as CEO
of New.net, I think it is appropriate to wade in on the debate to correct
some misperceptions in the email below.
Let me start by assuring Mr. Mathews and other readers of this list that
everyone at New.net is fully committed to operating a business that is
completely open and transparent about what we are offering, why we are
offering it and our limitations. We launched our business on March 5 with
three of the largest U.S. ISPs as launch partners (Earthlink, Excite@Home
and NetZero), enabling users of approximately 16.4 million ISP accounts to
access our domain names (in the same manner as other domain names). Since
then, we have signed up Juno and one other major ISP that will be announced
on Monday, adding another 7.1 million ISP accounts. We also have signed up
deals with five of the top 10 free download companies to bundle New.net's
client application with their software (with full disclosure), which deals
currently are adding about one million additional enabled computers with
access each week (or about 20-25 million additional enabled computers over
six months). Applying the same standards for Internet usage per ISP account
and computer used in last year's U.S. Census reports, we estimate that we
currently reach over 44 million Internet users worldwide (including about
34% of U.S. Internet users) and will reach over 64 million Internet users
worldwide by the end of September (including about 43% of U.S. Internet
users) without doing any additional deals. Some may think that these
numbers are not significant; we do. Moreover, we plan to continue growing
quickly by adding additional ISPs in the U.S., Europe and Asia in the near
future and signing up additional download deals.
As for what we tell consumers that purchase our names, we have attempted to
be very clear about how our system works and the fact that not everyone on
the Internet can see our domain names (unless they download our client
application or simply append ".new.net" to one of our domain names, which
also works). We display a ticker on virtually every page of our website
that tells visitors the "Number of Internet users with access to New.net
domains." The ticker and statement is accompanied by the following
statement: "New.net domain names are accessible by persons that activate
their browsers or use one of our partner ISPs to access the Internet. This
number is limited now, but growing daily." We also include detailed
explanations of how our system works and its limitations in other places on
the website. Some will always argue that we could be doing more, but we
think that this disclosure is pretty clear. (Also, we are adding some more
disclosure in the next few days regarding our specific methodology for
determining the number of users that can access New.net domains.) We
certainly do not think that we are defrauding or misleading anyone.
We think that there is considerable demand for better, more descriptive
domain names than the names currently available under .com, .net, .org and
the commercialized country codes. We have seen this demand first hand
reflected in the strong response we got from purchasers of New.net domain
names since we launched. Moreover, we have seen a tremendous growth of a
New.net community of users that support what we are doing and are building
websites using New.net domain names. For many of these users, they do not
care that Internet users in France cannot see their .chat website that is
intended to appeal to U.S. users. Other users don't care that the majority
U.S. Internet users cannot easily access their .family website intended for
use primarily by the website owners' family members and friends. The point
is that there are many uses for domain names that have less than ubiquitous
accessibility, and the world is not made worse off nor customers harmed by
selling them a domain name now that they want to own and use.
New.net does not expect to convince overnight all members of the domain name
industry that introducing new domain names now is a good thing -- although
we certainly think that it is. For those of you who support the idea of
introducing more competition into the name space, want to give your
customers names that they will find extremely attractive and useful(despite
their limitations), and/or recognize this as a significant business
opportunity, I invite you to sign up as a reseller of New.net domain names.
For those of you who cannot stomach the idea, I sincerely hope that we can
build your trust over time. (By the way, I have asked Tucows management
whether it would be interested in making New.net domain names available to
its resellers, and I was told that Tucows would do what its resellers
request.)
We welcome all comments and suggestions. We also welcome inquiries by
persons/entities interested in becoming a registry for particular new TLDs
that could be introduced via New.net's system. To avoid further expanding
this string, please contact me directly at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Best regards,
David Hernand
CEO
New.net
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Robert L Mathews
Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2001 6:29 PM
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Re[2]: New TLDs working already?
At 5/12/01 3:31 PM, William X. Walsh wrote:
>Only in the same way that ICANN is the single point of failure for the
>ccTLDs and gTLDs in the existing root structure.
Ummm, ICANN seems unlikely to go out of business, and if they were
somehow "discontinued", I feel quite confident that some other
organization would take over the administration of the root servers
voluntarily used by hundreds of millions of people. Are you suggesting
otherwise?
New.net, on the other hand -- and I say this based only on vague general
knowledge of Idealab and the fortunes of other Internet companies --
seems much more likely to go out of business without a successor. I doubt
someone else would take over a business model that had already failed in
the market and that was adopted by only a minority of the community, even
when that community was (so I hear, correct me if I'm wrong) offered
financial incentives.
>You obviously know nothing of the levels new.net has gone to and the
>technical details of how their service works.
>
>I'd do some research before making such uninformed proclamations.
Gosh. That's one of the more insulting things you've ever said, and I
think you him an apology.
I personally find it hard to believe that anyone who's done any research
at all could defend new.net's offering to consumers:
There are approximately 400 million Internet users
[http://www.c-i-a.com/200103iu.htm]. According to new.net's own
statistics, only 21 million of them can resolve new.net domains.
Perhaps new.net should change their disclaimer to read "94% of the people
on the Internet can't view these domains", rather than emphasizing the 21
million who can.
At the very least, I'd suggest they change it to "21 million people (out
of 400 million) can see these domains". Otherwise, their "21 million"
statement is misleading; it makes 21 million seem like a big number (it's
not). They're relying on the consumer's ignorance of the number of people
who CANNOT resolve the domains. I consider any marketing scheme that
merely takes advantage of consumer ignorance to be disreputable at best.
I agree that new.net is adding new resolvability all the time. However,
by my calculations, in the time it's taken them to add 5 million more
since they started, approximately 40 million new users have joined the
Internet. Even if new.net adds 20 million a year (not likely -- I assume
they've already picked the low-hanging fruit), only 12% of the Internet
(120 million of 1 billion) will be able to resolve their domains by the
end of 2005.
I wonder how many people who have signed up with new.net (assuming there
are any) would have done so if they'd been told "at current adoption
rates, more than 85% of the people on the Internet won't be able to use
your domain name at all for at least five years".
If new.net's domains resolved for, say, 85% of the Internet, THEN I'd
consider it ethical to start selling them (with appropriate disclaimers).
But collecting money when they'll almost certainly resolve for less than
15% of the Internet for the foreseeable future? They should be ashamed.
More to the point, resellers of 100% working domain names (i.e., most of
the people reading this) should be crying "foul!" loudly from the
rooftops. New.net is attempting to convince our mutual customer base that
switching to new.net provides a viable, usable alternative to the service
we're offering. Nothing could be further from the truth -- new.net is
selling goods that are shoddy by comparison -- and I'll damn well tell
the world why.
--
Robert L Mathews, Tiger Technologies
