Symantec agrees to buy part of Verisign

According to the New York Times, security firm Symantec is on the verge of closing a deal with VeriSign’s authentication services unit for $1.3 billion USD. The unit made up nearly have of VeriSign’s $1.03 billion sales revenue last year.

VeriSign wants to get out of the authentication business in order to focus on domains. It currently has a monopoly over the sale of .com and .net names. I guess it will make up for the profits lost in the sale by charging you and me more for domains.