The tag line, taken from the popular 1939 movie, “Wizard of Oz”, Lions, Tigers, and Bears, Oh My! was customized to communicate my take of the events that have taken place in the Domain Industry in recent weeks. There already has been quite a bit said on the recent SnapNames.com/Oversee.net Scandal, here, here, and here, so I will not go in depth on the post. Instead, I will focus and share my opinion on the core of the problem, transparency.

(Image Source)               “If I Only Had A Brain”

I don’t make it a habit to talk about issues going on in the domain industry in general.  Most of the time, I am not politically correct, and a bit abrasive when addressing sensitive issues openly. I am a direct type of guy and call a spade a spade without sugar coating how I feel about a subject/issue. I often offend individuals by my comments because of my direct approach, even though I base my assumptions on facts and historical data. So let me apologize in advance for offending those individuals. I felt it was neccessary to voice my opinion.

“Fraud, Scandals, And Lies, Oh My!” Are You Really Surprized? I know i’m not, and I can not believe it has taken years for corruption of this magnitude to be discovered. While Oversee.net is the first company to be identified, I predict it will not be the last. I believe the Oversee.net scandal is going to reveal more corruption with other companies in the industry with due process.

The domain industry was built on unethical business practices as individuals did whatever it took to take ownership of valuable expiring domains. Unfortunately, it didn’t stop there, as several entrepreneurs started registering trademark and typo domains to make additional revenue. Fast forward to the present, and nothing has changed with domainers since 1999 except new names and faces. With the exception, most seasoned domainers stay clear from trademark domains. 

Now you have Domain Conferences, PPC companies, Auction Companies, Broker Services, and Expiring Domain Auctions. None of these existed back in 1999 with the exception of a few Auction and Broker services. As these services flooded the domain industry, competition grew 10 fold to gain new clients, especially in the in PPC market. The beginning of corruption in the industry IMO. Special PPC deals were cut for major portfolio owners in stealth mode, while everyone else continued to get screwed by the same PPC companies to say it bluntly. These major players knew how bad small timers were getting screwed over with PPC companies when compared to their special revenue deals, but remained silent. They empowered these PPC companies to become giants, get rich and stay nontransparent, all while making the mighty green back dollar.

Conflict of Interest: The circumstance of a person who finds that one of his or her activities, interests, etc., can be advanced only at the expense of another of them.

There was an immediate Conflict of Interest (COI) for these owners in the present and future if they ever let the cat out of the bag to the general public. You see, if they did, their earnings would be effected. Transparency would effect everyone’s bottom line involved with PPC companies. Additionally, Domain Conferences had a COI because they depended on these same companies and many more as sponsors. It was not in anyone’s best interest on the higher levels of the industry to expose the truth. Rick Schwartz was the only one to question transparency from PPC companies, but nothing ever matured from it. Then PPC rates fell through the floor and the topic never resurfaced. (Amazing it still has not, even though google.com’s online advertising revenue has continued to sky rocket each quarter from advertisers. Someone is getting over!)    

Anyway, special PPC deals like this, enabled Oversee.net (With additional investor funding) to build a monopoly in the domain industry. They bought Snapnames.com, then later secured Moniker.com. They had all the right platforms to find the most valuable domains and build an empire. Not only an empire, but additionally had the resources now to affect the complete domain industry, good or bad. 

Then comes along Nelson Brady, aka halvarez, who delivered the bad to the industry publicly with his shill bidding on Snapnames.com. I find it hard to believe that this gentleman acted alone bidding in 50,000 auctions. The incentives did not benefit him, as much as it did the company. I am almost certain he had investors in both private and high management levels in the industry for names he acquired through snapnames.com auctions IMO. Hell, the guy spoke at conferences and discussed his domain portfolio with a few players, but still no one bothered to ask questions or put the pieces together?

As we follow the yellow brick road during the investigation that is ongoing, I believe we will find several additional executives, companies, and perhaps individuals that have been executing unethical business practices where the customer has been victimized, true transparency. Along the way, we may even discover some of the evil Munchkins who  played a role in this disception by handing out candy and gifts to lure innocent business owners to be taken advantage of. I imagine everything will be revealed with due process.

There is alot of smoke in the domain industry, and historically, it has been hard to see what is real and what is an illusion for those out of the loop.  Recently, a new smoke gernade was thrown IMO with 3 industry executive VP’s resigning from key operations that effect thousands in the industry. No one in the industry commented or blogged about this extremely rare move during the holiday seasons except DNJournal.com. Could these resignations be a sign of the fallout to come from the Snapnames.com scandal? Are other companies covering up similiar scandals with their auction platforms? This at best is a conspiracy theory forming after the breaking news of shill bidding by Nelson Brady on snapnames.com. 

In closing, I would like to ask the Top executives at SnapNames.com and OverSee.net (And many more to come in the near future), Did you really think you could get away and continue to abuse your clients and fatten up the bottom line by conducting unethical business practices? I will never get an answer to that question, so we will have to let the lawyers and investigators weed out the facts for the industry. However, in my opinion, they have blatantly proven with their current settlement contract that they will continue to conduct business as usual. I imagine, many of these greedy executives could always use the defense in court from the Scarecrow in the “Wizard of Oz” from wrong doing, by simply singing his song, “If I only Had A Brain”. 

At the end of the yellow brick road, will you really be surprized to learn that Oversee.net was not the only company in the domain industry conducting unethical business practices? Are PPC companies next to be exposed? I expect others will be revealed. If this does happen, Micheal Arrington’s assumption that the domain industry is dirty, just might be validated. Time will reveal the truth.

The core problem in the domain industry is the lack of transparency in all services provided, especially with PPC Companies, and the lack of government regulation in this industry IMO. If the domain industry is to be respected as a true industry, it can not go on conducting business as if this was still the wild, wild, west. I ask readers, is it even possible after 10 years of running wild? Perhaps if we click our heels 3 times as Dorothy did, and say outloud, Transparency with each click, it may come true.