Eric Auchard
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.