Tldr: Verisign, the registrar of the .com tld. They have been jacking up domain prices.
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,$10.26So, 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 moneyeconomy.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.
Also, domain names used to be free.
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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.
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.
Maintaining a single tld is a part time job at best.
The entire business would be such a trivial government operation, and we wouldn’t have to lose money to corporate greed.
Elizabeth Warren once again calls for reform on inconsequential shit. She sits on the Finance committee, how about you pass some real fucking fiscal policy instead of yelling at the Fed because of their legally required monetary policy.
That woman is really high up there for useless Senators.
Yeah, how dare a sitting member of the Senate Finance Committee target an American company worth over a billion dollars price-gouging the most important TLD on the Internet and arguably violating antitrust laws. Doesn’t she know that politicians are each only allowed one issue to care about? And that now she’s wasted hers?
Edit: Also, she’s literally the chair of the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Economic Policy which – you guessed it – includes issues regarding the Federal Reserve. Keeping an eye on the Fed is something she does as part of her job. Here’s her three days ago yelling at the Fed. Because that’s her job.
Also, is the idea that there are some monopolistic practices that we can let slide because they aren’t important enough?
It’s a well-known best practice to deal with monopolies only after they’ve gotten utterly, catastrophically out-of-hand and have a fuckload of leverage, yes.
