September 23, 2003 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Go Daddy Software Inc. (godaddy.com) said yesterday it has filed a lawsuit against VeriSign Inc. (verisign.com) in federal district court in Arizona, seeking a temporary restraining order against VeriSign?s Site Finder service, released last week.
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The VeriSign "wildcard" service redirects traffic that would otherwise have resulted in a "no domain" response to a VeriSign-operated Web site with search results and links to paid advertisements supplied by VeriSign. According to VeriSign, Site Finder has been visited over 65 million times by Internet users as of September 22, averaging more than 5 million unique visitors per day.
Critics have said that the service gives a private company too much control over online commerce and lets it profit from an essential monopoly over ".com" and ".net" names.
Go Daddy said in a release that the lawsuit complains VeriSign is misusing its position as the .com and .net domain registry to gain an unfair competitive advantage by intercepting (and profiting) from Internet traffic resulting from the significant number of domain names that are mistyped in a user?s browser every day - a number that can reach 20 million in a single day.
"VeriSign has hijacked this entire process," said Bob Parsons, president of Go Daddy. "When the user is sent to VeriSign?s advertising page, VeriSign gets paid by the advertiser when the user clicks a link to get off the page ? to the tune of $150 million annually, as estimated by VeriSign."
Parsons said that VeriSign?s wildcard service also hijacks traffic from domain names that do not exist.
"It?s important to understand that VeriSign?s charter to act as the .com and .net registry was never intended to let them manipulate the domain name routing system for their own profit," said Parsons. "This misuse certainly violates the fiduciary responsibility placed upon VeriSign by Congress to manage the .com and .net registries for the public good. Site Finder is being introduced by VeriSign solely for VeriSign?s own profit without regard for the hardships it places upon others. Site Finder will set a dangerous precedent if it is not stopped."
This is the second lawsuit VeriSign has been hit with over the service. Last week, Popular Enterprises LLC, the parent company of search provider Netster.com, also filed suit against the firm.
