This is really troublesome to those that could see the future - higher prices and possible more difficulties.

I hope they do not manage it like Enron. World tech people are crying over this as U.S. control of world internet affair.

Excert from Yahoo! news:

Mountain View, California-based VeriSign introduced a search engine in September 2003 that directed Internet users who mistype domain names like "http://www.example.com" to a search engine which contained advertisements.

ICANN ordered VeriSign to temporarily shut down the service a month later after engineers said that it could interfere with the stability of the Internet.

VeriSign sued in February 2004, saying the Internet body had overstepped its authority and illegally restrained competition.

The case was thrown out of U.S. court in August 2004, but VeriSign refiled in California state court.

Under the terms of the agreement, VeriSign gets to maintain control of the database of 35 million ".com" domain names until 2012. The contract would have otherwise come up for renewal in 2007.

VeriSign makes $6 per year from each of the 35 million .com domain names in use. It also controls the .net domain, which contains nearly 6 million names.

Full news:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051024/...isign_icann_dc

Yeah,

I heard about that on the register (www.TheRegister.co.uk)

However this is a lot bigger than you think it is.

Basically, america(intentionalyuncapitalised)don't want to give up their control of the internet.

Apparently they defied talks at a UN summit late last year to defer control to other countries.

When I find the article I'll post it...

With cell phones becoming more like computers in functionality, Verisign which is already big in e-commerce already,

eConsumers spent $30.1B during the 2005 holiday season, up 30 percent from 2004, report says.

probably took note of this beforehand of course but apply it to cellphone which is tremendously growing market by buying up this company specializing in bill viewing on cell phone.

http://www.internetnews.com/security...le.php/3576821

Looks like they will be around like Microsoft a total monopoly.