All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
When Network Solutions makes a change, a lot of people notice. When it involves changes in the management of valuable Internet names, they don't always like what they see.
Network Solutions, which handles registration of .com, .org, and .net domains, confirmed Monday that it has folded Internic, a longtime Web staple for looking up domain names, into its corporate site. The company said it was trying to make it easier for Internet users to register a Web address or make changes to an existing one.
"What we've done is really a consolidation of our various Web sites," said Network Solutions' Chris Clough. "We have primarily consolidated netsol.com, networksolutions.com, and rs.internic.net.... The intent was to consolidate the registrar function."
But the Internet business community worries that the company is moving to commercialize a public resource.
"There was a lot of public trust in the Internic name. It stood as a public utility that helped people register domain names," said Richard Forman, president of Register.com.
Under a 7-year-old federal contract, Network Solutions has had a lock on the business of registering Web addresses ending in .com, .net, and .org. But the government has mandated a transition to a competitive domain name registration. New registrars will begin test operations in April, and the market will open in June.
Network Solutions says critics of the changes are confused. "Nothing's changed other than all of the information that was available on all the sites is still available. Now it's just within networksolutions.com."
Whether the company has the right to fold the utilitarian Internic site into its corporate site is not clear, Forman said. Network Solutions' role has never been clear, partly because its government contract was too vague.
"You can't say that they've lived up to the letter of the law, but you can't say that they didn't," Forman said.
