Microsoft Live Domains
Just read on Dare’s blog that Microsoft is getting into the domain hosting business. This is a little surprising but seems like a reasonable move for them. It does grant Microsoft a bit of an ‘in’ when it comes to services I might want to add to my website – if my mail is hosted by Microsoft at my domain name, then any services I want on my domain name, I have to get from Microsoft. But I don’t know of anyone else offering this service for free, so it’s not a bad offer.
What I thought was funny, though, is that the SSL certificate that the domains.live.com site is using isn't issued by one of the usual big name certificate issuers; it's issued by Microsoft themselves:
While Microsoft's browser trusts Microsoft to issue certificates, Firefox does not. This means anyone visiting this site with Firefox gets a rather large warning that the certificate that the site is using is not trusted. I guess Microsoft didn't want to spend the $100 or so to get a certificate from a recognized authority.
It's that sort of lack of respect for the rest of the Internet that would make me wary of letting Microsoft host my domain.