RealNames ceases trading

[Andy Armstrong]

Luis Villa wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 2002-05-13 at 17:01, Andy Armstrong wrote:
> > Jim Whitehead wrote:
> > >
> >
> > I don't doubt that Microsoft are the embodiment of corporate
> > ruthlessness, but setting that aside for a moment is there anyone on
> > this list who expected RealNames to succeed? I know hindsight is a
> > wonderful thing, but I honestly thought the writing was on the world
> > from the get go.
> 
> What I told someone else yesterday: They would have (it is a crappy
> idea) but they should have been allowed to fail of their own accord.
> Luis

Oh I completely agree -- no doubt about that. I was just interested in
whether anyone with more business savvy than me (we're talking 95% of
the population, far higher for the population of FoRK) could see any way
a proprietary naming system could have suceeded as a product.

I can just about seeing the technology succeeding iff they'd opened
everything up, but then they'd have had no business model at all.

-- 
Andy Armstrong, http://www.tagish.co.uk/