2014 – The Year Of Dishonesty

On Friday, Rick Schwartz featured an Interview with Daniel Negari that was supposed to address the free .xyz registrations that Network Solutions has been giving to some .com owners since the .xyz General Availability without their consent. I say supposed because we didn’t get a single answer from Negari. Of course it is not Rick’s fault. Daniel Negari’s lawyers have instructed him good not to answer any questions regarding his Network Solutions deal. It doesn’t matter anymore. We all l know the truth.

My views are pretty much known by now: .XYZ is DEAD – DISASTER! Daniel Negari Exposed! .XYZ down to 34th place! Where is Deals.xyz? There are over 150 comments in this post.

My extreme writing tone came as a reaction to Danie’s continuing bullshit feeding and a blog post he made called .XYZ is LIVE – SUCCESS!. I can see a few people have bought some .xyz. Good luck with that! Thank god these are cheap and not a lot of money will be lost on the worst New gTLD. If you liked .xyz wait until I launch .GDFA in 5 years!!! The most generic extension ever! GDFA: “Generic Domains For All”. I could buy disaster.xyz that is free today but I won’t even spend a dime to support bullshit.

.XYZ have spend A LOT of money and they are not earning anything. How long until the registry folds? I bet it will be the first registry to go under.

I made a short comment over at Rick’s blog:

Negari never even mentions Network Solutions. I guess his lawyers have instructed him good. Not a single reply in this interview.

Q1: Absolutely no reply. Copy/paste from the .xyz FAQ. Q2: Joe Parvin said it well above. Does the registry or Negari or any other entity associated with the above have any deals with Netsol? Yes or No?

You are right Bulls: “Answer all questions under oath.”

The other questions are not quite relevant.

And some food for thought: Why do you think a registrar chose the General Availability day to register thousands of free domains. Everybody knows that on that day the most registrations happen so they could only assume that at least a few paid registrations were bound to happen on that day. Why not wait a week or a month to run such a promotion? The only explanation is that it was done on that day so that the .xyz numbers were inflated.

You can read here all the comments, including one from Ron Jackson. Ron’s comment seems to have shifted a bit from an article he wrote the previous day. He said this among others: “That being said, I think Daniel can learn and recover from this – who among us hasn’t made a mistake or two along the way? I am especially saddened by the personal attacks I have seen written by people who don’t know him. I’ve known him for years, like him and respect what he has accomplished at such a young age. In my opinion (and that of many others who know him well) he is a good guy who is totally passionate about his product. Like the rest of us, he has probably said some things he regrets – it happens – but I’ll be surprised if it continues going forward. It’s the right time to tone down the rhetoric and focus on the job ahead.”

I am not sure if Ron is referring to me above but I sure hope you do. I am more saddened by dishonesty than by personal attacks. I have made mistakes and I have and will admit I made them. Daniel Negari is hiding his head in the sand like an ostrich. He had plenty of opportunities to come clean but he didn’t. Ron, I too know you for a long time. Don’t you think we had enough of this?

But the best comment of the year came from Joseph Peterson:

Evidently Mr. Negari is on unswerving autopilot. In the video above, he proudly announces to his team (but mainly to the camera), “We are now the number 1 new TLD in the market place!” And, after several enthusiastic cheers from his hangers on, he ends the video with, “I really look forward to hitting a million names.”

Not one shadow of a scruple nor any concession to reality. Posted June 6th, long after he would have been fully aware of the backlash against him. By that time — even if he were somehow innocent of rigging the numbers — he would have learned about the irregularities being publicly condemned. So he would have known that the counts he brags about are nonsense. Yet he continues according to plan.

This .XYZ CEO has here patronizingly explained to us the ABCs of our own industry — “registry”, “registrar”, “registrant”. For the benefit of us domain resellers, he has expounded on the difference between wholesale and retail. And he has emphasized (as before) a technicality — namely, that his company has arranged to be “paid the ENTIRE wholesale price” from Network Solutions.

Does he deny orchestrating or approving the forced freebies? No. With a slippery sleight of hand, he distracts us with irrelevancies. He didn’t see the email itself beforehand. He doesn’t know all the prices or all promotions at all registrars. So what? He knows what he’s accused of. It seems odd for an innocent person not to deny the actual accusations.

Although he goes through the motions of apologizing for our perception of his arrogance, he won’t deign to apologize for his actions or admit that the numbers he continues to boast about are ludicrously false. And that’s as arrogant as ever.

If Daniel Negari really didn’t know that the inflated numbers were coming, wouldn’t he be curious what had happened? Wouldn’t he spend some time investigating the secrets of his own company’s remarkable success? Wouldn’t he have spoken with Network Solutions and bring us a fuller account of what went on?

On the other hand, if Daniel Negari planned for the dubious numbers and has since been coached by his lawyers on how to evade admissions of culpability, wouldn’t he answer next to nothing at all? Having arranged for the cemetary to get up and vote for .XYZ, wouldn’t Mr. Negari confidently predict a record turnout? And wouldn’t he continue to count all votes from the walking dead — even after the zombies were detected by us — all the way to his million registrations?

He doesn’t seem bothered at all that his registrants are mostly zombies. Not even a lifted eyebrow.

Daniel Negari is charmingly boyish. But don’t let that distract you from what he has done and continues to do. In point of fact, he is asking thousands of people — mostly people who aren’t as wealthy as himself — to invest in his company and his self-absorbed vision of an .XYZ future. And he’s selling them his “gift to the world” primarily by pointing to registration numbers that he definitely knows to be deceptive and which he probably arranged in order to deceive. Where is his apology for this?

He predicted massive registrations. And he seems to have cheated his customers in order to create the illusion of success.

Strange that his “gift to the world” turned out to be a freebie … purely by coincidence and without his knowledge.

Thanks Joseph.