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RealNames offers rival global Internet name registry

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CIOL Bureau
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Eric Auchard

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LOS ANGELES: Privately held RealNames Corp. said on Wednesday it plans to

open up its proprietary system for marketing common words as a replacement for

complex Internet addresses, in a challenge to plans for an incremental expansion

of the existing Web site naming system.

"Now it's a question of not being greedy," said RealNames founder

and chief executive Keith Teare, a former British political activist turned

Silicon Valley entrepreneur. "It's a question of letting go in order to get

big."

The plan by Redwood Shores, Calif.-based RealNames, whose powerful backers

include Microsoft, VeriSign and top banks and venture capitalists, would compete

with the current dominant system for locating information on the Internet that

relies on so-called "Uniform Resource Locators" or URLs.

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RealNames disclosed its plan at the annual conference of the Internet Corp.

for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Internet's technical governing body,

which is to decide on Thursday whether to expand the Web's official naming

system beyond suffixes like ".com" and ".org."

New names under consideration range from ".web" to

".union".

The RealNames system threatens the existing global structure for marketing

names managed by VeriSign's Network Solutions, which also competes with scores

of other registrars around the world in selling Web addresses, called domain

names, that end in .com, .net and .org.

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VeriSign also holds a 10 per cent stake in RealNames. If widely adopted,

RealNames' system would in effect offer an entirely private name registration

system, compared with the current unwieldy semi-privatized domain name system.

The RealNames system routes Internet users to specific sites that have

licensed the use of key words, offering a simplified approach to locating

information on the Web that gives marketers a powerful tool for attracting

customers.

For example, in the current system, Internet users must type the address http://www.hp.com

into their browser software to get to the site of Hewlett-Packard Co.

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Under the RealNames system, an Internet user can simply type in the word

"invent," which Hewlett-Packard has licensed from RealNames as part of

a brand advertising campaign.

The RealNames system already works on Microsoft's dominant Internet Explorer

browser, Phone.com's mobile Internet browser and AvantGo's software for use with

hand-held devices.

RealNames said it plans to set up a three-tier international network

beginning with technical registries that would be responsible for licensing use

of the company's key word system country by country.

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These national registries would in turn appoint multiple registrars, which

would then sell key word site locators directly to customers.

RealNames said its system is designed to conform to an emerging standard

known as Common Name Resolution Protocol (CNRP) and Universal Description,

Discovery and Integration (UDDI), under discussion by international technical

groups that would in effect function as an additional layer of software on top

of existing Internet software that simplifies Web use.

The company said its system would also help modernize the Web to support

multiple languages, including complex Asian languages, and support new ways of

linking to the Web using voice controls or so-called "natural

language" software that understands spoken syntax.

(C) Reuters Limited 2000.

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