The latest press release from GNR is interesting in several respects. It announces a "new" product. It encourages trademark owners to hurry up and get their defensive registrations in. And it touts that .name is now "Powered by VeriSign." Woohoo! This is what masquerades as competition in the ICANN world -- stale TLDs, powered by the incumbents, rolling out new name spaces in the hopes of capturing more trademark dollars. Meanwhile, the incumbents have ICANN so tied up in processes for new services -- Sitefinder, IDNs, WLS -- that staff can't focus on creating real competition. Real competition would be the introduction of new TLDs powered by new market participants. When will we see that?

In late 2000, I wrote in my weblog that we wouldn't see another round of new TLDs until 2004 at the earliest. Readers wrote to say I was nuts -- including readers in Marina del Rey. This is one time I hate being right.