255
Tldr: Verisign, the registrar of the .com tld. They have been jacking up domain prices.
this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2024
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Year,Wholesale Price (USD)
2012,$7.85
2013,$7.85
2014,$7.85
2015,$7.85
2016,$7.85
2017,$7.85
2018,$7.85
2019,$7.85
2020,$7.85
2021,$8.39
2022,$8.97
2023,$9.59
2024,$10.26
So, by percentage that's:
2021,6.9%
2022,6.9%
2023,6.9%
2024,7.0%
I'm not sure those raises are justified, but we did just go through a period of high inflation, and even a business like Verisign has employees and other expenses that got more expensive. I'll be interested to see where this story goes.
Verisign is a government granted monopoly who's primary job is to maintain a database of who owns what domains. That job is largely automated. The actual end user sales are delegated to dealers; Verisign doesn't even do much of that. I'd be surprised if they had 500 employees.
All they really need to do is run a database server. Not even a big one, like Google copying the entire public internet.
They get fees from every domain every year. The servers get cheaper and more efficient every year. I'd be stunned if there was any reasonable excuse for these price increases.
any reasonable excuse for these price increases.
Profit.
Skimming through their financial reports it seems they needed to the money to finance share a buyback program. So they are helping the ~~rich people money~~ economy.
Not a reasonable excuse.
Derp, I forgot to add that in before posting.
It was going to be a big long gripe about profit seeking bullshit... but then I'd just be preaching to the choir ;-)
What did they cost in the early 00’s? I vaguely remember it being a lot compared to these prices.
IIRC, when Verisign had a registrar monopoly, they were charging $35/yr with 2 years up front.
That's more than a 30% increase!
I want my own tld
They won’t do what I really want: .d
Right, it doesn’t work.
It would be weird if it did because .d means directory
When does .d mean directory?
In UNIX
But TLDs are not “UNIX”
I never said they were. I just said .d means directory in another context
Well, a .com is a CP/M binary file introduced in ~1975, whereas the TLD wasn’t introduced until 1985. So, put that in your pipe and smoke it. 😝
Yeah that's weird too. So would a TLD of .txt or .doc or can you imagine a TLD of .html?
They're all weird just to various degrees.
Why would you want .d as a TLD? To me it would just be weird and confusing.
.a, .b, .c…
Why are they limiting us? Seems like ICANN has an unfair position.
Someone should start a competing dns that allows domain registrations with single letter domains.
That’s kind of how .onion works (for dns)
You haven't answered why somebody would want these confusing tlds
It’s not confusing. It’s just a tld.
Alright Mr. https://google.com.html/
A url is a url. If your only concern is that it might be confusing to the user, then we shouldn’t have TLDs at all.
googIe.com and google.com are different. What now? Force serif fonts?
Literally insane take
Also, domain names used to be free.
ICANN signed an agreement with VeriSign in 2020, sanctioning the maximum allowable price increases in return for $20 million over a five-year period. Thus, allege Warren and Nadler, “Verisign and ICANN may have a collusive relationship.”
Yeah that seems a lil messed up.
Maintaining a single tld is a part time job at best.
ICANN jacking tld prices has been a problem so long people complained about it the first time ICANN was created to overtake IANA.
Not only is this well known, it's literally displayed for everyone to see with registrars fighting over domains with ads and people buying cheap alternatives tlds.
The entire business would be such a trivial government operation, and we wouldn't have to lose money to corporate greed.