Not sure if this is a good thing, but Verisign announced yesterday that they are selling Network Solutions to a private equity firm.
I worry a bit about this quote from the press release:
"We believe that this transaction will strategically position VeriSign to focus exclusively on our core mission of providing critical infrastructure services for the Internet and telecommunication networks, while allowing Network Solutions to pursue its own independent strategy in the web presence market." said Stratton Sclavos, Chairman and CEO of VeriSign.
My concern is that this actually translates into something more like this:
We believe that this transaction will strategically position Verisign to focus exclusively on screwing around with the registry and the Internet's basic stability, without having to answer to consumers who may choose to punish us by taking their business elsewhere. By paring the company down to only its monopoly components (vis-a-vis domain name services), we feel that we can more freely muck around in the fabric of the Internet in ways that bring us financial gain while locking all potential competitors out of the picture. Stewardship? No, we prefer to focus on profiteering.
>sigh<