Inside Pool's New OLS - How They Plan to Counter NetSol in the Drop Game Now

[Duke]

You've probably heard about Pool.com's upcoming Open Listing Service (OLS) by now, but DNJournal.com takes you beyond the press release with background from Pool President Taryn Naidu (interviewed at Traffic 2004 last week) on the new plan. It is expect to roll out any day now and you'll be happy to know OLS won't be a sealed bid 2-phase auction process!

The program represents a completely new business model for Pool. After dominating the game for the past year they were forced to remodel the whole operation when Network Solutions started giving SnapNames exlcusive rights to their drops (attracting a $150 million lawsuit from Pool and others in the process). Read all about it through the link below:

Registrars Plan to Pool Their Resources in New Open Listing Service

 

[StockDoctor]

Good work again Duke. Looks like you may be the appointed domainers advocate.

Of course since Pool makes it's money by squeezing every penny from us domainers, they aren't going to make any great effort to influence their OLS partners in providing grace periods or sharing arrangements to current domain owners. It also appears that the rebellion against their two-tiered sealed bid system has forced them back to the regular auction/proxy thing. Do they still intend to take names submitted by their customers and stick them on the next days hotlist? Seems that forces their best buyers to submit names last minute. They don't catch everything. Other than their suit against Verislime, what do they intend to do about the best names being sent to Snapnames and the loss of market share to Dotster and Tucows? With all their greed, I hope they dry up and fly away.

 

[Duke]

Other than their suit against Verislime, what do they intend to do about the best names being sent to Snapnames and the loss of market share to Dotster and Tucows?

Of course the suit is partially intended to break that exclusivity arrangement NetSol now has and with those names now no longer available (as well as Tucows & Dotster names soon to disappear from potential inventory) Pool knew they needed a broader base of names than what Namescout alone could provide. That's why they came up with OLS - to pool as many names as possible from those not going it alone and hopefully reach enough critical mass to remain a power.

Naidu told me they are reconsidering the 2-phase auction currently in use at Pool though a decision hasn't yet been made (OLS will use the old style open auction). If I were betting I would put my money on it going back to the old format. Initially Pool and OLS will operate in parallel but if OLS is successful Pool as we know it (including Marketplace) will likely be folded into OLS. Their plan now is to be a completely different animal. Instead of being a retail drop catching service - they will try to make their money providing the backend API to registrars around the world who want to be part of OLS.