Date: 2010-01-10 01:03 Security: Public Mood: sad Tags: everydns Subject: EveryDNS

Aw, crap. EveryDNS.net, my favourite free DNS provider and totally free, has been acquired by the company who owns DynDNS.

Why is this bad? Well, we know that DynDNS is focused on money, and EveryDNS is free. In addition, DynDNS already offers much the same service that EveryDNS does. It doesn't take much to realise that DynDNS are not going to want to punt money to buy something that will make them a loss; they're going to want to monetise it - or, more likely, coax people over to DynDNS.

I opened a support request. I'll edit this post when I hear back from them:

Hi there!

I just noticed the acquisition by Dyn.net on the homepage. While I'd like to congratulate you on that, I'm kinda nervous; in my experience acquisitions have never been a good thing for users of the service being acquired, even if the seller has the utmost faith that it'll be fine. (See LiveJournal's sale to 6A, then to SUP, for some prime examples of this.)

This is especially true in the case of EveryDNS; it's totally free, and not even donations are required (although I have donated several times myself, as I love the service), therefore it's a loss-maker. No company would want to acquire a loss-maker (and pay millions for the privilege) without making some changes to make it otherwise, and we already know that DynDNS itself offers a similar service and charges for the ability to use your own domain names with a dynamic IP, so it's pretty obvious to me that we'll start to see either the DynDNS service being pushed aggressively, some of the more advanced features being taken away, and/or charges being put in place for those functionalities. (While ads may also be put on the site, these won't nearly pay enough for the other things not to happen; the service EveryDNS provides is one that people don't visit the site for, so ads wouldn't work on their own.)

I understand that you won't be able to confirm any of this right now; you may even believe that it won't happen, that Dyn promised otherwise. Sadly, I know that it will; it always does, and anything else just wouldn't make economic sense for Dyn.

This is not to denounce your decision to sell; it's one that I know can't have been taken lightly, and I'm sure all these things were going through your own mind as you did so, and the sale was probably reluctant.

The reason I am opening this request is to ask if anything here actually *is* incorrect. I may have been too overbearing in my thoughts, so I'd like clarification on this.

Also, do you plan to email the people using EveryDNS to talk about the acquisition? I haven't had an email about this and the only reason I knew was the single line added to the homepage.

Thank you for reading,

- Sophie.