Unmasking… the “Snow’s”
This blog didn’t set out to be a daily blog like so many other blogs out there in blogville. The posting may be infrequent, but in terms of delivering the goods, I aim to satisfy, and always true to the spirit of demystifying the world of IDN.
This is hopefully the first of a few articles in this series, where I attempt to un-mask some of the great unknown IDN domainers.
If like me, you have spent many hundreds of hours in the whois, you will have constantly run into the “Snow’s”. Their portfolio of IDNs is nothing short of legendary, and although I feel like I know them because I have bumped into them so many times, of course I don’t know them at all.
I make it my business to know most people in this business, but to-date for me, and I’m sure for most of us IDNers, the “Snow’s” have remained largely tight-lipped private people.
For the first time ever, Andrew Snow speaks candidly about his background, and the future of IDNs.
Q. GM: Anyone who has spent time in the whois will have seen the “Snow’s”, yet to many you are surrounded by mystery; what can you tell us about yourselves?
AS: No mystery really. The better half of the Snow’s is my college sweetheart and life companion for over three decades. Though we’re both from the U.S, we had met, travelled and have worked overseas and speak several languages. We have and enjoy a large family. My background includes law (attorney), business (MBA), and entrepreneurship (serial).
Q. GM: How and when did you first get involved with IDNs?
AS: In the mid nineties my wife and I were doing some charity work that entailed travel to orphanages in under-developed and emerging economies. At the same time the Internet was taking hold as a popular medium in the developed economies and the unprecedented impact of its digital revolution was coming into view.
I saw it as one of the most significant inventions in human history for it had the potential to change the equation that lies at the core of human progress itself. Innovation, the driver of progress, occurs when creative minds and knowledge cross-pollinate in a timely fashion.
Throughout human history the total pool of potential “pollinators” was a mere single-digit percentage of humanity. But now, the internet’s ability to deliver instant, dynamic, low-cost, and mass access to information and knowledge had the potential to dramatically change this equation’s numerator by multiplying the potential “pollinator” pool several fold in one or two generations – leading to a burst in innovative progress.
However, for many there was a road-block to the access ramps to the info-knowledge superhighway that was destined to eventually reach them, as these ramps – the domain name system- were designed and built for ASCII enabled travellers only. Since the jury had already delivered its verdict in the mid-nineties on the unprecedented potential and value of the digital real estate -domains- thru which this traffic was to flow, both the significant need and the opportunities in fixing these ramps were evident.
Q. GM: So what did you do?
AS: I began with some research into the DNS structure, Unicode, languages, Internet browsers, and other related issues. It became evident that any approach that mandated the insertion of anything but ASCII into the root was technically complicated and destined to be met with insurmountable resistance from those whose support would be needed for its implementation.
Another approach would be needed.
I then had the rather simple idea of utilizing, not changing, the existing DNS by way of piggybacking on the existing ASCII through adding an invisible layer that would function unseen to users and translate from non-ASCII to ASCII and reverse.
I devised an encoding scheme that was based on the location of a non-ASCII character in relation to a QWERTY keyboard, with workarounds for special character and language exceptions. (I took private lessons in several languages via a language school in order to deal with this).
I then wrote and filed a patent titled “Non-Roman Character Domain Names in the DNS”. In addition, utilizing an IE developer license, we built the first (I believe) IDN capable browser which we dubbed the I-Browser (Int’l Browser) The I-Browser was able to receive and display non-ASCII inputs, transparently translate them to a “gibberish” ASCII according to our integrated encoding scheme, and send an ASCII query to the DNS for site retrieval.
From the start, we envisioned a fully internationalized URL, and so the system and the I-Browser were designed to accommodate and demonstrate full IDN.IDN
We partitioned the operating system of a laptop to accommodate multiple language simulations, added character stickers to create a multi-lingual keyboard, loaded the I-Browser, and built (on their underlying ASCII gibberish domains) the first two IDN sites that were seamlessly and transparently retrieved to a computer via the DNS and with IDN.IDN displayed in its browser (one of our kids still uses this laptop).
The sites were of Russian and Hebrew IDNs in order to demonstrate both left to right and right to left system capabilities. IDN Trivia: those first two sites were игры.россия (games.russia) and פרחים.ישראל (flowers.israel). And yes, we thought IDN.IDN cctld’s should and would be first.
Q. GM: And then what happened?
AS: Several things. First, the market and Internet environment at the time were overwhelmingly Anglo-centric and thus not quite ripe. Second, I found that some of the most brilliant engineering minds can induce systemic inaction unless they envision perfected solutions to all aspects of a problem in advance. Third, and most important, as we followed developments I found that there were parallel efforts in several places around the globe that were working on solving this, including those that ultimately devised a superior encoding scheme (RACE) and those who were ultimately first granted a patent for an IDN system (Walid).
Since it became evident that only a system that went thru proper ICANN channels would survive, and as patents, encoding techniques, and browsers were never the planned profit centers for this project, when public IDN testbeds and launches were first announced – we were ready to participate and move forward.
Q. GM: Which languages have you invested in?
AS: We have a master list of keywords that we translated into three dozen languages and have invested in many.
Q. GM: What are some of your best IDNs?
AS: Well, they say beauty is in the eye of the beholder – but to me 美.com is truly “a thing of beauty” -as are the rest of our beauty.com domains in 30 languages.
Q. GM: Which languages do you favor most and why?
AS: Chinese for market scope, Cyrillics for inherent adaptability, and Hebrew for right to left issues.
Q. GM: A key part of the investment model for IDN dot com is the aliasing strategy. Can you share your thoughts on this, and how and when we might see it unfold, and your logic behind your thinking?
AS: First, I’d like to note that there are many Latin and Latin extended languages that include IDNs that are not dependent on this issue as they maintain there .com suffix. We have many of these in various languages that receive a significant amount of type in traffic in addition to their inherent and valuable SEO/development advantages, such as niños.com or crianças.com or even çocuklar.com (children.com in Spanish, Portuguese and Turkish).
As to your question, this is becoming increasingly moot. To me, this issue has always been near-moot for in my mind there was only one plausible outcome when all constituencies and realities were considered. The only unclear issue was exactly the amount of time it would take before this was to come to pass. I believed all along that we would see full IDN cctld first, and then some aliasing mechanism for gtlds together with some ICANN approved fee structure for its implementation. China helped a great deal by persistently pushing for IDN and then by being the first to officially alias IDN.ASCII to full IDN. Though it took a decade to complete, the whole event was to be played out as: Game (testbeds), Set (RACE to Punycode), Tie breaker (browser support) and MATCH (aliasing)
Q. GM: How would you explain the advantage of IDNs to someone who knows nothing about them?
AS: This week in Israel – where they mostly read, write and speak Hebrew – they’ll celebrate the “festival of lights”. So for quick holiday tips do they type in non-Hebrew: Hanukah.com, Hanukkah.com, or was that Chanukah.com – and who really knows? Would a business in the U.S. want to depend on the ability of its customers to remember its online brand or type its web address in, let’s say, Hebrew – to be able to be reached online?
Q. What do you think is the biggest risk facing IDN investing today?
AS: Just like the ASCII market: Investing later rather than sooner.
Q. GM: What advice would you give to domainers just starting out in IDN?
AS: Don’t fear other languages, and don’t forget that the “www.” stands for world-wide web. Otherwise, it’s 1998 all over again – and you know what to do.
Q. GM: What advice would you give to current IDNers?
AS: Remember that the true value of our “new” real estate is in its affinity, proximity, and attractivity to mindshare – the new location, location, location. And just as in the “old” real estate, the greatest value and purpose of location is – development, development, development.
GM: Thank you Andrew for taking the time to do this interview and Good Luck with all your online ventures.
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