CNET News.com: VeriSign to revive redirect service

VeriSign will give a 30- to 60-day notice before resuming a controversial and temporarily suspended feature that redirected many .com and .net domains, company representatives said Wednesday.

AND (no coverage on this yet that I’ve seen) I got a notification email from VeriSign announcing the sale of Network Solutions, the registrar part of VeriSign we love to hate, to “a new entity formed by Pivotal Private Equity.”

(Here’s a Google News search on “verisign to sell network solutions”)

The note describes the buyer as “a provider of equity for middle market corporate acquisitions,” and links to a press release.

So, I guess the venture boys called in their chips?

It seems odd that the sale would be taking place at the same time as the announcement of the intention to reinstate that redirect service. Could it be that the venture money was seeking the redirect service and when the ruckus started, wouldn’t budge?

Hm, maybe not. The San Jose Business Journal notes that Verisign split the old NetSol registrar biz off from the registry proper, and that the registrar is being sold while the registry remains with VeriSign. The registry is the part with the genuine control over the behavior of the TLDs, and therefore the 404-redirect doohickey as well.