Antone Johnson’s Comments

• Apr 17th, 2012 @ 2:08pm

  Re: Re: What about existing patent law?

  on Twitter's Revolutionary Agreement Lets Original Inventors Stop Patent Trolls
  Yes, the brilliance of this approach is that it takes existing basic concepts of patent law and points them in a different direction — one that serves the public good. A single company doing this once won't have an impact, but if it catches on as an industry-wide practice in the way that open source and Creative Commons licenses have, for example, it could have a major cumulative impact over time.
• Jan 23rd, 2012 @ 3:00pm

  Re:

  on Fourth Amendment Lives? Supreme Court Says GPS Monitoring Is A Search That May Require Warrant [Updated]
  Why? Getting a search warrant requires persuading a judge, no matter how you slice it. What was alarming before this decision was the prospect of being tracked 24/7 without a warrant.
• Jan 16th, 2012 @ 7:19pm

  Stack THIS, madam spokeswoman

  on Boo-Freaking-Hoo: RIAA Complains That 'The Deck Is Stacked' Against Them On CES Panels

  ...the deck is stacked to ensure no meaningful or balanced debate occurs on an issue that is very important to American jobs and our economy."

  
  
  What about the 30,000+ "American jobs" created by the hated Google alone, and $200 billion market value created and poured into "our economy" by Google alone, in just the past decade or so?
  
  These guys deserve all the profanity that Mike was classy enough not to sprinkle liberally throughout the article. Having read about the outrageously stacked legislative process that the bill has been through so far, reading this had me bursting a few blood vessels as well. Mike, hats off to you for calling it as you see it.
• Dec 30th, 2011 @ 10:58pm

  Fundamental misunderstanding of the economics

  on GoDaddy Boycott Fizzles; Twice As Many Domains Transfer In As Out
  These numbers by themselves are nearly meaningless. Others have pointed out various reasons why. At the end of the day, what matters is the marginal impact to GoDaddy's business — in registration volume, in revenue from registrations/renewals/ancillary services, and ultimately in the net lifetime value (LTV) of each customer minus customer acquisition cost. Simple domain transfer in/out statistics, even if accurate, are woefully inadequate to give any indication of the above. To elaborate:
  
  1. In the absence of a boycott, GD might have 75K domains transfer in and 5K out on an ordinary day. (Arbitrary numbers made up to illustrate my point.) The real pain inflicted is the marginal decrease (if any) in net inflows of domain registrations vs. what it would have been without a boycott.
  
  2. GoDaddy has been targeting domain owners with aggressive promotions to retain them as customers or win back people who already initiated transfers. (I am one of those people who received an offer by email.) To the extent customers accept those offers, by definition it entails slashing GD's profit margin on those customers, at least in the short term.
  
  3. These numbers don't reflect domains for which the owners (a) turn off auto-renewal, planning to transfer before they expire; (b) decide to renew for a shorter period than they otherwise would have; or (c) decline to buy extra services like private registration, hosting, email, etc. and instead get them from another provider. Again, reducing LTV.
  
  4. These numbers completely ignore customer acquisition cost. GD's online marketing team may well have gone on red alert and started spending money hand-over-fist to drive much higher traffic than normal in order to offset the damage.
  
  The basic financial equation for any subscription/recurring revenue business is:
  
  

  Profit = ( LTV – Customer Acquisition Cost ) x Volume

  
  Look, GD has been freaking out and made two rapid, embarrassing shifts in its stance on an important public policy issue. They know their own business better than we do. If they're seriously worried about the impact — which by all indications appears to be the case — it's for a reason.