Unfortunately I cannot be in Vancouver for the conference. I write this from Cape Town, venue of last years fall ICANN.

I want to disclose a couple of things upfront. Those who know me will know I am nothing if not strongly independent in my views. However disclosure helps those of a more suspicious mind know my associations and if they choose to, take them into account in interpreting my opinions.

1. I sit on the board of SnapNames. I can’t think of any conflict this gives rise to, but in the highly charged atmosphere surrounding this discussion I felt it worth saying.

2. I have, on occasion, consulted for VeriSign as an external product strategist. Most recently I ended such a job in May of 2005. Again I feel no conflict as a result of this but I think it is worth disclosing.

So, here goes. I am somewhat disappointed by the reaction to the proposed settlement. I feel that most of the discussion fails to take into account the actual conditions under which the settlement has been negotiated. Blatant self interest is masquerading as informed comment, most obviously from the Registrar community. Most amazing of all is the failure to grasp the enormity of what the ICANN board and staff has achieved with this proposed settlement, the ramifications of which will be positive for all ICANN constituencies for many years ahead.

Here are the top ten points I think are pertinent to an understanding of the settlement and its context :

1. ICANN has succeeded in changing the competitive landscape by introduction of more TLDs

There are now many more TLDs than when ICANN was formed. The concept of a monopoly in the contract to operate a single TLD makes absolutely no sense. There is no monopoly any longer.

2. Growth of ccTLDs has made this even more so

Today, one in every two new domain names is a ccTLD second or third level domain. This is a phenomenon that has been growing over the last several years. This process also makes the concept of a single TLD contract giving it’s owner monopoly rights rather moot. Ask CNNIC if it feels VeriSign has a strong market position in China. Same in the UK, Germany, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, indeed any country with a strong ccTLD operation.

3. Sale of NSI registrar has the same effect

At ICANN’s formation VeriSign (then NSI) ran the sole TLD’s and had the largest Registrar. Today, .com represents a far smaller proportion of the worlds domain names and VeriSign owns no registrar. Clearly VeriSign is a diminished animal as a result of the three new developments above.

4. Therefore ICANN’s role in aiding competition has been accomplished.

Insofar as ICANN’s remit included the job of introducing competition into the domain name industry, it’s goals have been more than fully achieved. Today, as never before, consumers have plenty of choice in deciding which domains to purchase and whom to purchase them through.

5. ICANN was never, and is not now a regulator. It is a coordinating body.

ICANN was never intended to be a regulator along the lines of an FTC or an FCC. It is a coordinating body responsible for policy matters covering the security and stability of the Internet, and even then, only in relation to Names and Numbers. It’s remit of allowing competition to flourish was a single exception to that, and could even be interpreted as being part of guaranteeing stability and security. Now that this goal has been achieved, the regulatory aspects of the Registry agreements should be removed. 6. The market should now be allowed to determine business related things like pricing and product development (so long as stability and security are not compromised).

Price controls, product controls and similar instruments should be passed over to the market to regulate. Any registry, even the ,com and ,net registries, will have to take market realities into account before introducing new products/services or changing prices. And as the industry is 100% channel based, they will also have to take into account the views of the Channel (registrars and resellers). ICANN should not seek to play the role of the market. It should protect security and stability. 7. The ICANN-VeriSign agreement should be seen as the first in a whole series of steps to clarify ICANN’s role as a coordinator and not a regulator. Allowing the market to determine demand for TLDs and pricing for them is key here.

Now that ICANN has begun to focus on policy developments that will allow the market to determine key aspects of registry pricing and product development we should expect to see more innovation. For example it seems logical that TLD’s should be able to come into existence simply because a party capable of running one desires to bring it into being. The market and the ability to run a TLD should e the only obstacles. ICANN’s cumbersome and lengthy process of filtering really should be reduced to a role of determining ability to run a registry and any other stability and security issues. New products from Registries should be treated in the same way. Registrars should be encouraged to use their market power either individually or collectively to encourage their suppliers (Registries) to take into account their needs. Turning to Daddy (ICANN) to regulate should be strongly discouraged.

8. Registrars will also benefit from this by market growth (a bigger pie).

With these developments the market for the domain name industry should grow larger (primary domain name sales, secondary market names, new products and services) will all be introduced to meet market demand. As the pie grows all layers of the industry will benefit.

9. Users will not suffer if pricing and product development flow from market requirements and competition. Prices can only rise above a customers willingness to pay if users have no choice. This patently isn’t so.

Users will not suffer if the industry focuses on products and services that meet an identified need. Choice will grow and users will benefit. If prices rise it will be because the value of the product justifies it’s price.

10. Paul Twomey and Vint Cerf plus their colleagues deserve much credit for initiating this process of creating ICANN’s next stage of development.

I believe that the ICANN staff, led by Paul Twomey and the board, led by Vint Cerf, have done an amazing job of recognizing the need for ICANN to enter a new era or market driven growth in the domain name industry. Despite the heat there is primarily light in the proposed settlement. The industry should congratulate them and now move on to execute their individual strategies based on this new reality. There are many innovations to come and those who focus on the past are likely to be it’s victim. Post-settlement the future looks bright for those who grasp it’s potential

I have been meaning to post on this for a while and didn’t do so because I wanted to wait for the dust to settle. This seems like a good time.

My old company Easynet has been acquired by BSkyB for something around $375m. I was co-founder of the company, in 1994, with my friend David Rowe. David remains CEO. I left about 12 months after our IPO, in 1997, to start RealNames.

Firstly, congratulations to David and his team. But especially to David. He is an incredibly focused entreprenuer who, despite the market cap getting up to $2 billion or so during 1999 remained dedicated to building out a genuine competitor to the Telco incumbents across many markets in Europe.

BSkyB’s acquisition is testimony to that focus. They need an infrastructure capable of driving a triple play (voice, video and data) connection to homes and businesses throughout Europe. because of EasyNet’s DSLAM presence in many telco head ends, there was really no better optioon.

I can claim no credit for the sale, it’s all down to what David and the team have accomplished over the years since I left. And i get no benefit from it – I sold my shares a long time ago. However I’m still feeling proud. I helped David found a great company. we established it as the first consumer ISP in Europe. Highlights for me include being chosen by Microsoft to launch Windows 95 with them; getting our first customer, 6 weeks after having the idea, and banking our forst $10 check; meeting lots of great entreprenuers in CYBERIA (our cybercafe chain at the time); going public without raising venture capital; my time with David and Eva (his partner) debating strategy and tactics; being on a public company board, and realizing it wasn’t what I excelled at. And so many others.

Again, congratulations to all at the company. And good luck with a future with the Murdochs. Bound to be more interesting times ahead.

I take the family to Cape Town each year around Thanksgiving. We have a home here – in St James, overlooking the Indian Ocean. My Wife, Gené is South African and the children’s grandparents and an Aunt live here.

This year is no exception and we set off on Saturday morning at 5.30am. We arrived in Cape Town (via New York; Dakar; Johanesburg) on Sunday evening at 10.15pm local time (12.15pm Pacific).

I have set up call forwarding of all my home phones to Skype (Skype in works great here; my number is +1-650-557-2086). I have also brought a Vonage router and my +1-650-331-1433 Vonage number works here. Calls back to the Bay Area are free. Awesome.

I’ll be working most of the time. We are 10 hours ahead of Pacific Time so you can usually find me in the office between 10pm Pacific through Midnight; and again at 8am Pacific through Noon.

Russell Beattie ay Yahoo has a lengthy post about RealNames. It’s a generous and thoughtful piece. Thanks for the link Russell.

There are a couple of things worth knowing.

Firstly RealNames didn’t really crash in the bubble. At least not directly. We were profitable and growing fast (about 120% a quarter back in Q1 2002.

Secondly, we had an awesome business model. Resellers all over the world were selling Keywords. Most uptake was in China, Korea and Japan where we were the only way to make local languages useable as navigational addresses. We had pretty strict controls on ownership but we were able to segment nations into seperate namespaces. Today we would do local keywords too.

Thirdly, we were doing 1 billion resolutions a quarter in Q1 2002. That was page views that MSN lost to us because we were able to provide direct navigation to a web page from a keyword. Microsoft decided to close us down in order to regain those page views. Search this blog for the story.

There is a patent. You (Yahoo) own it through your acquisition of 3721.

I still own all of the code and the domain name.

Google launched GoogleBase last night. What a disappointment. Whilst Google Reader clearly points to somebody at Google “getting” the importance of edge published content and real-time indexing, GoogleBase is a throw back. Basically a dumb flat-file database system for the world to throw content into. It’s actually embarrasing for the whole of Silicon Valley. I know insiders who desperately do not want their name associated with it. Can’t say I blame them.

Not to be abusive but why would millions of people who run web sites, and databases, and blogs, suddenly feed stuff into GoogleBase (an act of duplicating their already web based data into another database run by Google)? Maybe to get better search results. But this is an act of pure laziness from Google. The same results could be achieved in a manner far more consistent with the distributed data model that the world is currently flocking to. Google, just define a few extensions to RSS, make it easy to publish a feed with those extensions, and suck in the feeds. It works!

Oh well. Back to work

Update: well I guess the primary reason this is disappointing is that we expect Google to innovate. This just isn’t innovative. See Mike Arrington’s assessment on TechCrunch

A website – http://www.live.com – just went live. Bill Gates is keynoting and Mike Arrington, Dave Winer and Dan Farber are blogging. I was just messing about and tried live.com. Wow!

I think Microsoft is about to launch live.com as an MSN replacement? Check it out.. Later.. not an MSN replacement. A complementary service. Ad funded.

And there is more. Check this out. Windows Live is the new moniker.