Jeremy wrote:
] Nick, I'm not sure that it is the case. The press release
] states that "VeriSign will retain a minority interest
] in Network Solutions and retain its registry business."

They are keeping the registry, which is the root servers for .com and .net, but not the registrar which is the domain name registration business.

Their conflict of interest in running both the com/net registries and a registrar business is the justification for many of the restrictions on their operation of the registry in their contract, including most of the reasons cited by ICANN when they threatened to sue over SiteFinder. It remains to be seen how much that minority stake will enable ICANN to continue to justify said restrictions. I predict that this move is not coincidentally timed, that they will in fact argue for reduced restrictions on operation of the registry, and if they loose that arguement over the minority stake they will dump it and try again.

] Tom, I don't think Pivotal is necessarily "confused" about the
] value of Verisign.

Then I think you are confused about the value of NetSol. This is a business that charges 3+ times what their competitors charge for a simple service. They retain customers largely because they had first mover advantage and many businesses are too lazy to cut over to a cheaper provider, and in the off case where someone irrationally decides that they'll get "more value" from a higher priced product. As part of Verisign I think I could have made money with it. On its own I think its a goner, long term. There is MONEY here, but no growth. In fact I predict a slow contraction of this business, followed by lowered prices while the premiums are spent in marketing. They might keep it from dieing, but without new services this company is not going anywhere. They might be able to reinvest the premiums into new businesses if they got a CEO who really had great ideas. Would YOU bet millions on that? You'd be better off taking those millions and putting them into a startup.

RE: Pivotal Private Equity to Acquire World's Largest Domain Name Registrar, Network Solutions