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It's been a while since I really got motivated over an issue and write my thoughts down. I just received an email from Sedo suggesting that their upstream advertising partner (ie. Google) was going to force everyone to use the Sedo nameservers when they park with Sedo rather than sending the traffic via a redirect. The biggest question I have is why is Google and Sedo making this move and what do they hope to gain?
 According to the Google quarterly report over the past few years they have been consistently reducing their Traffic Acquisition Costs (TAC) by paying out publishers and domain owners less of the advertising pie. At the moment the average payout is 26.4% and it appears to have stablised over the last three quarters. Remember that this is the average payout across ALL publishers and that as many domain owners are aware they have experienced a very sharp decline in revenue over the last 18 months.
 The first question that needs to be answered is, "Why is the TAC levelling off?" From my experience the decline is being arrested by second tier advertising players that have managed to scale to the point that if Google reduces the payout any further then the second tier players will begin to eat into the Google market share.
Google is therefore in the position where it can't increase its retained revenue line by increasing margin (or decreasing TAC) therefore like any large organisation it has now taken the hammer out on control. From the email that has been circulating it would appear that Sedo will not be paying out on redirected traffic and that Google is forcing everyone to use the Sedo nameservers.
In my opinion this is a classic power move by Google to further extend its control over the domain industry. By forcing domain owners onto particular nameserves Google is attempting to further restrict the movement of traffic away from its own advertising solution.
The advent of domain revenue optimisation by companies such as ParkLogic has meant that massive volumes of traffic were more freely flowing to the highest paying monetisation solution at that moment. This essentially reduced Google's control as pricing gaps were exploited for the benefit of the traffic owner. If you park your domains yourself then let me assure you that you are losing out on revenue. Domain optimisation and monetisation has become a highly valued and highly skilled process that involves massive databases and ongoing domain management.
As Google's payout moves closer and closer towards the second tier advertisers then there will be greater and greater opportunities for traffic to move away from them. By utilising Sedo to control the flow of traffic Google is dramatically reducing its exposure to potential competitors while maintaining the decline in payouts. My guess is that there will be an initial carrot (ie. higher payouts) before a stick is presented to drive domainers to accept lower payouts.
Let's take the next logical step in the domain traffic game. After controlling the traffic and reducing the payouts to a minimum the next greatest margin that can be easily consumed by Google is the margin taken by the parking companies themselves.
The parking companies do not own the traffic or the advertising relationships and with a weakened Yahoo this places them in a potentially precarious position. Although the move to nameservers may initially benefit Google based parking providers in the medium-term it will likely be their downfall as Google tightens the controlling noose around their and the entire domain industry's neck.
Google and through their partner Sedo will claim that there will be better results due to faster page loading and that it will benefit the domain owner. We have conducted extensive test via redirects and DNS and the difference is marginal if anything. The reason why organisations attempt policy decisions like this is not for the benefit of domain owners but ultimately for their own benefit. No domainer should be surprised as the reason why Google is in business is to make money. When in doubt follow the money trail and you'll soon find the real reasons for this change.
In my opinion what should the parking companies do? They need to ultimately save their own businesses by saying no to Google now before it's too late and then threaten the Sherman Antitrust Act. The levels of control already exerted by Google on domain traffic is phenomenal and the "Do No Evil" slogan has been well and truly broken over the back of the domain industry.
It's times like this that men and women of good conscience need to stand up, be counted and say "No" to an organisation that is stifling innovation and expressing monopolistic tendencies against an entire industry.
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Assume that 1) there won't be any way to change the A records (a Sedo parking page will always be shown) and 2) most domains make pennies a year in in parking (i.e. the owners are mainly interested in selling the domain rather than parking revenue). Combining these two assumptions would give Sedo a stranglehold on the aftermarket.
If a domainer wants to list a name for sale they'll essentially be listing exclusively with Sedo. Since they're the biggest and most active platform right now, there will be little choice but to pull the listing from Afternic and other small sales platforms. In the case of Afternic, why would they want to list a domain where the landing page says "Buy this domain at Sedo"? Of course this hinges on the nebulous question of where the greatest buyer exposure is. Whether most find through direct nav, SERP listing, brokers, landing page depends on the buyer type, domainer or end user.
It also inhibits domainers that put up active for sale pages to gain SERP exposure to certain keywords that potential buyers might be attracted to. Why bother if the exposure is swamped out by the large size of Sedo's audience?
This seems like a very tempting option for Sedo (along with your higher initial payout "carrot"). It's equivalent to Google buying a controlling stake and dictating the rules, with Sedo riding along as a barnacle.
Please comment if any of this is drifting into conspiracy theory territory.