The Times: Tech column - RealNames/Saint Internet
By David Rowan
REALNAMES was one of those not-quite-needed ideas that nonetheless received $100 million of funding in the dot-com dream days. Its premise was simple and, once the frenzy died, patently unnecessary: by typing a word or company name into a web browser, rather than conducting a search, you would be taken to the website that had "bought" that word. But people soon learnt to type in URLs (Web addresses), diminishing the service's value. So it was no surprise that the business closed this week, after Microsoft failed to renew its contract to let RealNames work with Internet Explorer (IE). But amid bitter recriminations from the company's boss, Keith Teare, some fascinating detail is emerging about the domination Microsoft has over online developments.
Five years after starting the company, Teare has decided to "put the record straight" on his website before Microsoft offers its own gloss on the closure. Sure, he has an axe to grind. But his experience is very revealing about the domineering, monopolistic culture at Microsoft that is stifling innovation where it is not in full control.
Let's start with some numbers. To gain access to IE, RealNames had to give Microsoft a fifth of its stock and $15 million in cash guarantees last year ("more than 100 per cent of our revenue"). It also proposed a revenue share that, Teare calculates, would have been worth $200 million to Microsoft over five years. Still, despite continued growth (if not profits) at RealNames, Microsoft last week broke off the deal. Money, it claimed, was not the reason: "Even if you paid we would not renew," Teare was told.
As he sees it, with its 90 per cent ownership of the browser market, Microsoft no longer needed to share its platform with an outsider. Strange, this, for Microsoft is supposedly building an online infrastructure that will deliver other companies' applications.
"The only naming technology in the world capable of allowing non-ASCII characters to be used as Web addresses is being killed at birth, before it succeeds and becomes 'out of control'," claims Teare. "A small private company is being denied an audience, not because of money, but because of fear of losing control."
Teare concludes from his "pretty unhappy" experience that Microsoft " seems comfortable only at the application level, where it has control, not at the infrastructure level - and this ultimately keeps many innovations from happening". Meanwhile, Bill Bliss, the Microsoft executive who dealt with RealNames, has apparently just been moved to "Natural Language Platforms" to develop an in house version of - what do you know? - a system that uses names to find websites.
"The browser is now back under Microsoft's control," concludes Teare, "and it is possible that - having learnt much from RealNames - it will develop its own version of our resolution service." And you wonder why the judges like to give Bill Gates a hard time.
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AIR CREWS and midwives have them, and now the Internet is finally to be granted its own patron saint. The Pope, increasingly excited by the Web's potential for evangelisation, devoted last Sunday's Vatican address to this "new forum for proclaiming the Gospel" (clearly he hasn't yet read those "Amazing Sex Pill!!" e-mails clogging up his Hotmail account). The smart money is on St Isidore of Seville getting the job: the learned 6th-century archivist once managed to appear in two monasteries at the same time, suggesting an early awareness of video-conferencing. The Catholic Online website (www.catholic.org) has even posted a "prayer before logging on" in St Isidore's honour, beseeching God that "during our journeys through the Internet we will direct our hands and eyes only to that which is pleasing to Thee, and treat with charity and patience all those souls whom we encounter". Not forgetting some net-filtering software, too, Your Holiness ...
(The Times, May 15 2002)
REALNAMES was one of those not-quite-needed ideas that nonetheless received $100 million of funding in the dot-com dream days. Its premise was simple and, once the frenzy died, patently unnecessary: by typing a word or company name into a web browser, rather than conducting a search, you would be taken to the website that had "bought" that word. But people soon learnt to type in URLs (Web addresses), diminishing the service's value. So it was no surprise that the business closed this week, after Microsoft failed to renew its contract to let RealNames work with Internet Explorer (IE). But amid bitter recriminations from the company's boss, Keith Teare, some fascinating detail is emerging about the domination Microsoft has over online developments.
Five years after starting the company, Teare has decided to "put the record straight" on his website before Microsoft offers its own gloss on the closure. Sure, he has an axe to grind. But his experience is very revealing about the domineering, monopolistic culture at Microsoft that is stifling innovation where it is not in full control.
Let's start with some numbers. To gain access to IE, RealNames had to give Microsoft a fifth of its stock and $15 million in cash guarantees last year ("more than 100 per cent of our revenue"). It also proposed a revenue share that, Teare calculates, would have been worth $200 million to Microsoft over five years. Still, despite continued growth (if not profits) at RealNames, Microsoft last week broke off the deal. Money, it claimed, was not the reason: "Even if you paid we would not renew," Teare was told.
As he sees it, with its 90 per cent ownership of the browser market, Microsoft no longer needed to share its platform with an outsider. Strange, this, for Microsoft is supposedly building an online infrastructure that will deliver other companies' applications.
"The only naming technology in the world capable of allowing non-ASCII characters to be used as Web addresses is being killed at birth, before it succeeds and becomes 'out of control'," claims Teare. "A small private company is being denied an audience, not because of money, but because of fear of losing control."
Teare concludes from his "pretty unhappy" experience that Microsoft " seems comfortable only at the application level, where it has control, not at the infrastructure level - and this ultimately keeps many innovations from happening". Meanwhile, Bill Bliss, the Microsoft executive who dealt with RealNames, has apparently just been moved to "Natural Language Platforms" to develop an in house version of - what do you know? - a system that uses names to find websites.
"The browser is now back under Microsoft's control," concludes Teare, "and it is possible that - having learnt much from RealNames - it will develop its own version of our resolution service." And you wonder why the judges like to give Bill Gates a hard time.
++++
AIR CREWS and midwives have them, and now the Internet is finally to be granted its own patron saint. The Pope, increasingly excited by the Web's potential for evangelisation, devoted last Sunday's Vatican address to this "new forum for proclaiming the Gospel" (clearly he hasn't yet read those "Amazing Sex Pill!!" e-mails clogging up his Hotmail account). The smart money is on St Isidore of Seville getting the job: the learned 6th-century archivist once managed to appear in two monasteries at the same time, suggesting an early awareness of video-conferencing. The Catholic Online website (www.catholic.org) has even posted a "prayer before logging on" in St Isidore's honour, beseeching God that "during our journeys through the Internet we will direct our hands and eyes only to that which is pleasing to Thee, and treat with charity and patience all those souls whom we encounter". Not forgetting some net-filtering software, too, Your Holiness ...
(The Times, May 15 2002)
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