_____Related Links_____ • Professionals to Get Elite Internet Status (The Washington Post, May 8, 2002) • Maori Domain Heads For Approval In New Zealand (Newsbytes, May 7, 2002) • The Story of '.us' Has Its Critics (The Washington Post, Apr 30, 2002) • Tech Policy Section E-Mail This Article Printer-Friendly Version Subscribe to print edition

Reuters
Wednesday, May 8, 2002; 12:02 AM

SAN FRANCISCO, May 8—Security and Web address provider VeriSign Inc., which has seen layoffs and missed its sales target partly as a result of lower-than-expected Web address sales, on Wednesday announced it will auction domain names on eBay Inc.

The auctions of ".bz" domain names will be targeted at businesses, Verisign said in a statement. Other domain names are likely to follow, a spokesman said.

With 46 million users, EBay offers a ready market for everything from vintage baseball cards and diet pills to airline tickets and used computers.

The ".bz" domain is the top-level domain for the Central American country of Belize and is different from the ".biz" domain, which is one of the new generic top-level domains that will be entering the ".com" dominated market.

VeriSign is overseeing the registry for the ".bz" domain.

Separately on Tuesday, VeriSign Chairman and Chief Executive Stratton Sclavos, speaking at the J.P.Morgan H&Q technology conference in San Francisco, could not tell analysts when he thought sales of domain names might pick up.

Those sales dropped off last year after the dot-com buble speculative bubble burst in 1999 and 2000. Until then, buyers gobbled up Web addresses in a frenzied attempt to stake a claim in the Internet.

Also under the eBay partnership, VeriSign will provide services to verify the identification of sellers on eBay to help cut down on fraud.

Currently, sellers provide credit card information to register on eBay and customers can rate the sellers following transactions.

"We're always finding people who have been suspended in the past and who are trying to re-register," said Kevin Pursglove, an eBay spokesman. "Or they're providing inaccurate information and are coming to the site to engage in nefarious activity."

VeriSign will handle the registration process and validate the identity of sellers by confirming phone numbers and addresses, said Anil Pereira, executive vice president and general manager of VeriSign's enterprise and service provider division.

For higher ticket items, VeriSign will also verify credit and other information on potential sellers as part of its Authentication Service Bureau, he said.