The end of an era in the Internet

I was very surprised to read Bill Brenner's article today about Stratton Sclavos resigning from VeriSign.  I had dealt with Stratton years ago back in the heyday.  I always thought he would either retire from Verisign to do philanthropy or else they would take him out feet first.  Reading between the lines, it looks like the board of directors may have forced this one on him before Stratton was ready. 

My original involvement with him was back when VeriSign was buying Network Solutions.  At the time Interliant (NASDAQ: INIT, since bankrupt) which I helped build, was one of Network Solutions major customers/partners.  In fact Network Solutions/Verisign made a strategic investment in Interliant of about 10 million dollars in a deal I was involved in. VeriSign was probably best known as owning the SSL certificate game and eventually bought out Thawte and others who competed with them. Then they also got into managed security services early on. I remember their stock had some great runs back then too.  Sclavos certainly saw the ups and the downs and remained as a constant throughout.  How many other CEO's of early Internet companies are still around? 

So, good luck to you Stratton and I will be watching what you do next.  Thanks for the memories and the good times!