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2016-10-11

Incompetent ICANN Struggles With Its Domain Names Marketplace Index

ICANN Timeline: gTLD Marketplace Health Index 1.0 Work Plan [Draft]
Three years of close observation of ICANN leads one to the inescapable conclusion to never underestimate the incompetence of ICANN management and staff when it comes to domain names. Why ICANN would be creating hundreds of new gTLDs (new generic top-level domains) when it obviously has little or no real understanding of the domain name marketplace, is beyond comprehension. Search ICANN.org for its Marketplace Index--https://www.icann.org/search/#!/?searchText=Marketplace Index--and you may find the following:
September 6, 2016: Comment from John Poole, Editor of DomainMondo.com, and domain name registrant, Re: ICANN's gTLDMarketplace Health Index (Beta): Call for Comments
1. I repeat and incorporate by reference, as if fully set out herein, the entirety of mycomment found here: https://forum.icann.org/lists/comments-gtld-marketplace-health-17nov15/pdfQsziB8ArJy.pdf submitted on January 8, 2016, in response to your earlier gTLDMarketplace Health Index Proposal: Call for Comments. You have ignored not only my earlier comment referenced above, but most of the other comments submitted at that time, including comments by ICANN's own Business Constituency and IPC, all of which can be read here: https://forum.icann.org/lists/comments-gtld-marketplace-health-17nov15/. 
2. Your gTLD Marketplace Health Index (Beta) is severely flawed and should not be used. You have failed to define the "marketplace" properly, you have ignored "pricing" as a key component of determining "Marketplace Health" (you should be tracking, and publishing daily, wholesale and retail pricing, as well as corresponding registration numbers, for each and every TLD in the global DNS if you are indeed interested in "Marketplace Health"). You are measuring such metrics as "geographic diversity" which may be irrelevant or invalid for reasons I discussed in my earlier comment and which your "expert" ProfessorHemant Bhargava also cited. We live in a global economy. GoDaddy and other registrars do business worldwide via the internet. Wake up ICANN, it's the 21st Century! (Get out of your "hub" mentality and into a "global" mentality.) 
3. It appears ICANN management and staff are too incompetent, inept, or conflicted, to develop a useful, relevant and valid domain names "Marketplace Health Index." I would suggest taking note of all the comments submitted previously and this time, and outsourcing the entire project to CENTR https://www.centr.org/ and/or the Internet Society http://www.internetsociety.org/ or some other entity competent to do the job.
--Respectfully submitted, John Poole, Editor of DomainMondo.com, and domain name registrant
Read all the other comments submitted here, but note particularly, the comment (pdf) prepared by Andrew Simpson, Principal Data Scientist, Verisign, embedded in full below, which begins with the following "Summary":
"ICANN has decided to move forward with creating the Beta Marketplace Health Index but has not yet created a meaningful dialog that would permit a consensus to be reached among various stakeholders impacted by the index. Thus far, ICANN has requested public comment on their initial gTLD Marketplace Health Index Proposal. Following this initial round of comments, ICANN convened an advisory panel where they presented a revised draft to the panelists who each individually sent additional feedback to ICANN. ICANN did not disclose to the members of the advisory panel how the feedback that panelists provided would be addressed. Instead, ICANN’s staff seems to have relied solely on recommendations from its funded research, which was edited and reviewed by ICANN staff alone. The resulting Beta report therefore lacks clarity around goals – as noted in the community feedback -- and continues to arbitrarily define an industry marketplace that does not reflect end users’ experience nor the actual marketplace in which TLDs compete." (emphasis added)
Simpson goes on to note: 1) further refinement of goals is necessary (robust competition, thriving/fair marketplace); 2) Marketplace Scope needs to be expanded--"gTLDs and ccTLDs coexist in the eyes of end users"; 3) The process needs to be clearly defined;  and in regard to Marketplace Stability and Trust (emphasis added):
"The ambiguity of the current definition allows one to conclude that the metrics are measuring whether ICANN has created a stable set of vendors that it [ICANN] can trust. If the desired goal is to evaluate the perspective of any others in the marketplace, such as domain name users, then the metrics need to be changed to be far more comprehensive."
 So where is the Marketplace Index project going now? Best guess is here:

gTLD Marketplace Health Index 1.0 Work Plan [October 3, 2016 Draft]:
  • (26 October) Advisory Panel Meeting 1–Overview of next steps, discussion of scope and definitions, high-level issues
  • (Nov 3-9 exact date/time TBD): ICANN57 community session-project overview and request for feedback
  • (Nov 3-9 exact date/time TBD): ICANN 57 Advisory Panel working meeting (Topics likely overall scope, metrics category definitions)
  • (12/1 (exact date TBD)): Advisory Panel meeting-finalize discussion of scope and definitions
  • (Week of 5, 12 Dec) Staff–develop discussion list of proposed v 1.0 metrics for discussion with Advisory Panel
  • (Approx 16 Dec): AP call–overview of proposed v. 1.0 metrics
  • (19 Dec-17 January Lag for holiday break, AP review and feedback
  • (18-31 January) AP meetings, feedback period on "robust competition" metrics
  • (1 Feb-14 Feb) AP meetings, feedback period on "marketplace stability" metrics
  • (15-28 Feb) AP meetings, feedback period on "trust" metrics
  • Face-to-Face meeting at ICANN58-March 2017
  • (22-28 March) Finalize metrics list for 1.0
  • (end March/early April) draft/publish RFP for data source, if required

Comment by Andrew Simpson, Principal Data Scientist, Verisign, submitted Sep 9, 2016:



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