Dylan Schiemann

With the common strategy on recent episodes of the Apprentice being to sell future services, inferior domain name provider network solutions has stooped to new lows, trying to convince people with a straight face that they should renew their domain name for 100 years. Network Solutions tactics bother me for several reasons:

Regarding the last point, Network Solutions appears to be taking lessons from Microsoft in promoting this service as a way to reduce confusion and worry. If they had built a simple system from the beginning that did not result in constant whois spamming, there would not be as many issues with renewal and domain theft. Why should a customer be convinced by a company to pay for a solution to a problem that was caused by the company to begin with? I make this reference to Microsoft because I believe that average people are afraid to buy and install software because Microsoft has intentionally made it confusing, difficult, and insecure, thus making it easier for them to bundle software with future versions of their operating system. In fact, I will go on to say that Microsoft’s legal team intentionally tanked the Eolas case, as this patent is a plug-in killer (Flash, Java, QuickTime), something Microsoft could not kill on its own without getting into even more legal trouble.