I disagree. The com/net zone is 144mm records, thats about a billion dollars per year in revenue. The technical requirements to store 144mm records with meta

I disagree. The com/net zone is 144mm records, thats about a billion dollars per year in revenue. The technical requirements to store 144mm records with metadata and have multiple redundancy, backup datacenter failover etc. does not come close to that in costs even if those costs are 10%. The cost is completely divoriced from the technical requirements, its simply what the market bears and is use to. They have momentum on their side. Some of the new tld's are very inexpensive right now, but that is only the short term business model to get market share. Their renewal prices are often higher and will stay that way.