The Verisign pile on effect
Critics have suggested that Verisign has financial motives for slowing out the rollout of fresh TLDs, and they’re likely correct.
Regardless of what Verisign’s motives are, and even regardless of the merit of its concerns, the note causes significant damage to ICANN.
Call it the “pile on” effect. Since Verisign is so notable in the domain name ecosystem, existing critics of the fresh TLD program can point to Verisign as an authority and use the note to rally the troops.
Exhibit A: Association of National Advertisers, the biggest fresh TLD scare monger, yesterday published a post called “Train Wreck Ahead“.
It refers to the Verisign note as well as a letter from PayPal warning regarding invalid TLDs by now in use on private networks.
ANA suggests that it would be in Verisign’s best interests to get fresh TLDs out there as soon as possible since Verisign will make money from fresh TLDs. I disagree; I’d argue it will be a net negative for the firm for at least a couple years. (.com values won’t go down, but the growth of registrations will continue to decelerate).
I have to admit, it seems that ICANN it saying “full steam ahead” despite having a lot of work to accomplish. Part of the the problem is the April 23 date ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé set for “recommending” the first fresh TLD for delegation. Regardless of when this recommendation occurs, I suspect it will be a while ahead of anyone can register these domains. Trademark clearinghouse, fresh registry agreement, fresh RAA…these take time. Yet sometimes the only way to push something across the finish line is to set a very aggressive deadline.
The pile on effect will be very visible at the ICANN meeting in Beijing. My biggest curiosity: will ICANN publicly question Verisign’s motives for the note?
