Those frontrunning bastidsservices, news, reference, customer adventures — by TDavid @ 7:37 am PST
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We haven’t used Network Solutions for many years for domain searching. This morning I learned what the word frontrunning meant in Mashable’s coverage of a class action lawsuit aimed at Network Solutions and ICANN:
Frontrunning is the practice in which users would look up a domain name via the registration-site WHOIS, and would appear available, but every other internet registrar would show the names as unavailable, and registered to Network Solutions, thus forcing the user to purchase the domain from them.
If what this lawsuit alleges is true, this is a dirty anti-consumer tactic and punishment should be severe.
Remember, this is the same outfit that once upon a time was charging $35 a year for domain registration when others were half or less the price. I’m not going to use this post to recommend other domain registrars, but there are plenty of viable alternatives to Network Solutions. These days you can register a domain for $5-8 per year and some hosting companies offer free domain registration if you pay for hosting with them.
It really is unbelievable that they are using the tasting rules to lock people out of domains. They claim its to protect people from poachers, but you don’t have to be the one who made the initial search to still buy the domain, you just need to do it through them. Hopefully we’ll see the regulators step in and stop this process. It’s really no different than a stock broker trading on inside information or frontrunning their customer’s orders. If they know that a domain is desirable and buy it before a customer has a chance to, then they are profiting from that direct knowledge. It may not be for millions of dollars, but all of those $35 fees really add up after a while.
Comment by Davis Freeberg — February 26, 2008 @ 11:29 am PST
Very interesting. I had always suspected that the domain name registrars were collecting the names of domains that people were interested in and then locking them up. It’s amazing that Network Solutions has been caught doing this. No wonder that sometimes I would see a good domain was available only to find that it was gone thirty minutes later. This behavior is very anticompetitive, and definitely against the spirit of the Internet’s sense of fair play. Kabateck Brown Kellner, the company that is leading the lawsuit, is very good at what they do. I would expect a big settlement within three to six months.
Comment by Ken Gaebler — February 26, 2008 @ 11:45 am PST