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Why ISOC sold .ORG to VCs

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Re: Why ISOC sold .ORG to VCs

#21

Post by manwe150 »

simias wrote: post #11

Honestly if that analysis is correct then on one hand I concede that it does make the decision appear less like pure bribery than I initially thought but on the other it's even worse for .org users. Maybe I'm wrong to consider this a zero-sum game, but surely if ISOC made a good deal selling .org that means that Ethos Capital got the short end of the stick. That means that eventually they'll realize that they can't m…

> Maybe I'm wrong to consider this a zero-sum game, but surely if ISOC made a good deal selling .org that means that Ethos Capital got the short end of the stick.

The field of economics, and pretty much all monetary transactions, are about demonstrating that sales (and thus wealth) are not a zero-sum game. Whether that’s true for any particular case, such as this one, can be debated forever still, just often not based simply on that assumption.

Re: Why ISOC sold .ORG to VCs

#22

Post by bad_user »

e2le wrote: post #17

How often do people notice domains? I've seen many users use Google or similar to find their desired site such as facebook without typing the URL. If it were only an IPv6 address, would people even care?

I notice domains. And I don't trust domains that don't end in .com, .org or a recognizable national TLD.

Besides, the point is irrelevant.

When you build an online brand, you build it by having links distributed on the web, to get the Google juice going, on social media, on forums, etc. Even in business emails you add your domain there for easy reference later.

Then if you have to change the domain, all of those links will be broken.

As they say... Cool URIs don't change ;-)

https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI.html

Re: Why ISOC sold .ORG to VCs

#23

Post by spullara »

jessaustin wrote: post #6
spullara wrote: post #3

Ethos Capital, as per their website and business model, is a private equity firm, not a VC firm. Very different things. Hard to take people seriously when they don’t know the difference.

Are you here to argue that PE people are somehow more ethical or better at business than VC people? That's going to be a laugh line for anyone who has ever been exposed to them.

Nope. Just trying to help people distinguish the two businesses. PE companies acquire private companies and run them. VC companies invest in founders and they run the company.

Re: Why ISOC sold .ORG to VCs

#24

Post by jessaustin »

spullara wrote: post #23
jessaustin wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you here to argue that PE people are somehow more ethical or better at business than VC people? That's going to be a laugh line for anyone who has ever been exposed to them.

Nope. Just trying to help people distinguish the two businesses. PE companies acquire private companies and run them. VC companies invest in founders and they run the company.

Since we're striving for accuracy here, usually they acquire public firms and "take them private".

Re: Why ISOC sold .ORG to VCs

#25

Post by marcosdumay »

herodotus wrote: post #19
Rebelgecko wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering that the price of a .org will almost certainly be going up soon, I think that $75m/year will soon be $82million. I don't think it's sustainable to pull that amount of money every year from a 1.1 billion endowment.

From the article (not my view): "And yet, those of us in the technology business understand viscerally that nothing lasts forever. What seems like a steady cash cow today may be obsolete sooner than anybody suspects. Personally I think even DNS will be disrupted in the future by some kind of distributed ledger technology beyond even blockchain, like hyperledger or hashgraph or some post-singularity quantum foam."

Well, after that sale the odds of something disrupting DNS grew a lot.

Re: Why ISOC sold .ORG to VCs

#27

Post by jessaustin »

rnhmjoj wrote: post #18

Can someone explain to me what actually operating a registry means? I have always assumed that it basically consists of maintaining a database replicated across a few authoritative servers and handling WOIS information but this can't possibly warrant $25M of yeary expenses.

Administration can consume any amount of money, so long as it isn't getting in the way of the money coming in the door. Just look at universities in USA. They're not doing anything now they weren't doing in 1980, yet tuition inflation was 7% over for most of the period since then. Where did the money go? They hired more assistant administrators, to justify higher salaries for the top administrators. Also the perks are pretty nice.

Re: Why ISOC sold .ORG to VCs

#28

Post by e2le »

bad_user wrote: post #22
e2le wrote: post #17

How often do people notice domains? I've seen many users use Google or similar to find their desired site such as facebook without typing the URL. If it were only an IPv6 address, would people even care?

I notice domains. And I don't trust domains that don't end in .com, .org or a recognizable national TLD. Besides, the point is irrelevant. When you build an online brand, you build it by having links distributed on the web, to get the Google juice going, on social media, on forums, etc. Even in business emails you add your domain there for easy reference later. Then if you have to change the domain, all of those link…

Perhaps it was incorrect of me to claim that users don't notice domains. I suppose the issue I was getting at was users don't appear to memorize the domain and instead use Google or similar for finding the site they are looking for.

Re: Why ISOC sold .ORG to VCs

#29

Post by BinaryIdiot »

GordonS wrote: post #16
herodotus wrote: post #4

If I understand the article correctly, ISOC took a reasonable decision based on (a) they are not supposed to be a registry operator; and (b) "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush". That is, the $75m/annum profit from .org may not last for long, but the $1.1135 billion will be a great endowment fund. The flip side is the implication (and I hope I read this correctly) is that a bunch of smart but possibly ethica…

> That is, the $75m/annum profit from .org may not last for long Why wouldn't it? .org is one of the most well-known TLDs, and I see know reason why there would be an exodus away from it (well, apart from this sale itself!) - it's as sure a thing as there can be.

I'm convinced that TLDs will slowly fade away. They're not very intuitive, especially if they're not a .com and the user is not very technical. I know Google would love for search to basically replace the need for them but I doubt that'll entirely happen. But I don't think they are long for this world.

Re: Why ISOC sold .ORG to VCs

#30

Post by toast0 »

rnhmjoj wrote: post #18

Can someone explain to me what actually operating a registry means? I have always assumed that it basically consists of maintaining a database replicated across a few authoritative servers and handling WOIS information but this can't possibly warrant $25M of yeary expenses.

The technical pieces are running the authoritative NS servers for the tld (lots of sites, anycast, etc), running the whois servers (not so hard anymore, now that post GDPR, they don't return much), and running the registrar facing apis that interface with the live database.

Administratively, I'm sure there's a rather enormous number of customer service requests to deal with from registrars and law enforcement/court orders. Also accounting related to the registrars.

If they were running it themselves, $25M/year seems within reason to me. Affilias can probably do it for less, because they're running a bunch of tlds, so the capital costs of operating the registry are amortizable across all of them. However, PIR could have (and should have) bid that out occasionally, so I'd guess there isn't an obscene margin here.

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