A few weeks ago, I took advantage of one of Google's new features, Google Alerts, which provides hourly news updates on the search term of your choice. It's terrific and surely signals the death knell of paid clipping services. I subscribed to searches on "ICANN," "Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers," "domain names," and a few other subjects of personal and professional interest. I try to make the subject specific enough that I'm not inundated with e-mail alerts. For example, "Iraq" is too broad, but "WMDs Found" is probably specific enough that you won't be bothered very often. If ever.

Since SiteFinder went live though, I'm getting almost as many GoogleAlerts as I'm getting spam. It's all Sitefinder, all the time. As I've been sorting through the alerts over the last week, it occurred to me that one of the most remarkable aspects of Verisign's Sitefinder launch was the lack of notice to the Internet community. Even if you forget about the users and ICANN, I find it hard to understand why Verisign wouldn't alert its channel partners, aka the registrars, about something this important. They were all gathered together in the same room on Friday -- ICANN Staff was there as well -- and not a word was spoken about the Sitefinder launch only three days away. Not even an "Oh, by the way..."

Verisign does claim to have cornered ICANN President Paul Twomey privately at some point though. According to a Verisign spokesperson, "Paul Twomey raised no objections" when he was briefed on Sitefinder. That may be a nice line to drop to the reporters, but it's not the sort of response I would have expected the Verisign legal team to allow. The official Verisign position, I'm sure, is that Verisign didn't need ICANN's permission. If Verisign is suggesting, however, that Sitefinder is kosher because Paul Twomey didn't scream "no" when the idea was bounced off of him in the hall, then I'm sure Dr. Twomey will be happy to reflect on it more carefully, perhaps even with a policy development process.

Quicklinks. The GNSO Names Council considers a resolution that would put a hold on Sitefinder until its effects can be studied in more detail -- and the Registrars separately consider a similar resolution. ...The Associated Press is reporting that ICANN " has asked a committee to review VeriSign's actions" and has "also asked VeriSign to suspend the service pending review by technical experts." Will that request be published? ...eNom's Paul Stahura notes that "the wildcard changes the result of the 'registrar hold' RRP command," which has prompted at least one note of concern from a trademark owner's legal counsel. ...Kieren McCarthy finds a silver lining in giving ICANN three more years at the reigns of the root: "when 2006 comes, there won’t be a need for any more US government approvals." ... Wendy Grossman in the Inquirer UK: "You may have forgotten to buy a cake and candles, but ICANN turns five years old at the end of this month...." ...Ross Rader picks up on the first Sitefinder lawsuit filed against Verisign, and he also finds a note on Nanog that Sitefinder may be the accidental cause of a Denial of Service Attack on Verisign. Strange justice. ...On the INTA list, John Berryhill writes "Another way of looking at it is this. The minute after John Zuccarini's domain names are removed from the .com zone file - Verisign will begin making the money that he used to get from them." ...Still another way of looking at it is www.jonpostelspinningingrave.com ...The Register notes a new name for the operator of the .com and .net registries: Verislime ...George Kirikos has a petition for Internet users to sign if they think SiteFinder should be stopped. ...and finally, Paul Twomey has issued a public letter to the ICANN Community on Whois and the agenda for Carthage, which ICANN intends to designate as the ICANN Annual Meeting for 2003.

Author's Note: Today starts the beginning of a new format for my icann.Blog. I'll only be posting to that section of my weblog on Tuesdays and Fridays. Expect more of a format like today's, with a longer comment followed by a lot of Quicklinks. Thanks for reading and for sending items in from time to time. Keep the notes and comments coming.