RealNames, Real Gone

Excellent weblog journalism going on courtesy of Dave Winer over here. As Dave points out, "Look what happened to RealNames when their only partnership was with Microsoft. Caveat developer." Interesting that Keith Teare writes one of the reasons Microsoft gave for not renewing its contract with RealNames was, "We do not believe in 'Naming,' we believe in search," and, "Some of us believe search results are a better experience than navigation through naming." Quite apart from the question of Microsoft's motives, in my view the naming versus search approach does have some real problems if you're going to let registrants tie up generic identifiers like "web expert."

-Later, more re RealNames:

The Washington Post
Slashdot and Newsbytes [via Bret Fausett]
ICANNWatch