5 ms·

What prevents Google from charging an absurd rate like some of the other TLD or other practices that effectively change the service?

CydeWeys 8y ago
The trend across the gTLD industry has been one of decreasing prices, not increasing prices. I'm not sure what you're referring to?
- cabraca 8y ago
  i guess he is talking about the premium domains: > During both the Early Access Program and General Availability, there is a $12/year cost for .dev domains. Annual fees may vary for Premium domains.
  - bduerst 8y ago
    "Premium" domains are resold domains. The prices are typically dictated by the person holding them.
    - CydeWeys 8y ago
      Premium prices are set at the registry level, and for Google's TLDs, are charged annually. The EAP fee is a one time only up-front cost. Domains being sold by resellers are something different entirely, but yeah, some registrars that participate in reseller networks may lump those in as "premium" as well, which is confusing. Those prices tend to be one-time acquisition costs.
      - 18pfsmt 8y ago
        Because this is your area of expertise, can I ask you why more registrars are not selling 10 or 20 year domain ownership? Who wants a domain for just a year (if you agree with the premise behind individuals owning domains in the first place)? If I could buy a domain for 50 years, I'd do it.
        CydeWeys 8y ago
        Most TLDs allow registration lengths up to 10 years. And registrars will happily sell you registration for 10 years. Buy the domain, then immediately renew it for 9 years. I suspect the reason they don't offer a choice of registration years in the initial checkout flow is to reduce purchasing friction -- they don't want you to have to make another choice and then potentially back out of the sale. It's the same reason e-commerce sites will ask you for as little information as they can get away with when checking out your cart; for digital sales many retailers just do zip code instead of full address since they're not shipping anything. As for longer registration periods than that, I suspect it's the same reason you can't, e.g., call up your cable company and try to pre-pay 50 years of service. They have no idea what things will be like that far down the road, and they don't want to have such longstanding obligations weighing on them. It comes down to business decisions, not technical issues; technically speaking the spec allows for up to a 99 year registration period, though I'm not aware of any TLDs that support that. https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5731#section-2.5 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5731#section-2.5
        Ayesh 8y ago
        I recently read an HN thread about Romanian ccTLD registry selling domains for lifetime. They have stopped it and asked the former customers to pay up though.
        CydeWeys 8y ago
        And also ccTLDs can make up whatever rules they want, whereas gTLDs are all bound by the same common set of rules. There are many ccTLDs that don't even use EPP (the spec I linked to above).
        manigandham 8y ago
        We already have enough sleazy domain squatters holding names for years and trading for ridiculous prices. Instead of long ownerships, we should have some way to prove you're actually using the domain after a certain number of years.
    - nikanj 8y ago
      Many of the new TLDs do their own domain squatting. Short, pronounceable domain names are flagged as "premium", and sold at a higher price. It's a nifty business hack actually, as unlike a 3rd party squatter, the TLD itself has no financial risk in upmarking domains.
- fxfan 8y ago
  The trend in browsers is being precise about standards and yet only yesterday google took an existing standard and tried to corrupt it. I'm not trying to be snarky and thanks foe answering questions but this particular comment was a non-answer.
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    It sounded like they were referring to something specific, but didn't provide examples. I want to know exactly what they're worried about so that I can answer the question, but I haven't been given enough to go on. It sounds like they're worried about prices being jacked up by large amounts, but I'm not aware of that even having happened. Absent that, the current prices are what they are; pay them or don't, but you know what you're getting into.
    - nanna 8y ago
      I think they might be referring to Chrome's upcoming use of &targetText= for linking to specific words or paragraphs, which caused some controversy here yesterday. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19168442 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19168442
      - CydeWeys 8y ago
        I doubt that's it.

CydeWeys 8y ago

The trend across the gTLD industry has been one of decreasing prices, not increasing prices. I'm not sure what you're referring to?

cabraca 8y ago
i guess he is talking about the premium domains: > During both the Early Access Program and General Availability, there is a $12/year cost for .dev domains. Annual fees may vary for Premium domains.
- bduerst 8y ago
  "Premium" domains are resold domains. The prices are typically dictated by the person holding them.
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    Premium prices are set at the registry level, and for Google's TLDs, are charged annually. The EAP fee is a one time only up-front cost. Domains being sold by resellers are something different entirely, but yeah, some registrars that participate in reseller networks may lump those in as "premium" as well, which is confusing. Those prices tend to be one-time acquisition costs.
    - 18pfsmt 8y ago
      Because this is your area of expertise, can I ask you why more registrars are not selling 10 or 20 year domain ownership? Who wants a domain for just a year (if you agree with the premise behind individuals owning domains in the first place)? If I could buy a domain for 50 years, I'd do it.
      - CydeWeys 8y ago
        Most TLDs allow registration lengths up to 10 years. And registrars will happily sell you registration for 10 years. Buy the domain, then immediately renew it for 9 years. I suspect the reason they don't offer a choice of registration years in the initial checkout flow is to reduce purchasing friction -- they don't want you to have to make another choice and then potentially back out of the sale. It's the same reason e-commerce sites will ask you for as little information as they can get away with when checking out your cart; for digital sales many retailers just do zip code instead of full address since they're not shipping anything. As for longer registration periods than that, I suspect it's the same reason you can't, e.g., call up your cable company and try to pre-pay 50 years of service. They have no idea what things will be like that far down the road, and they don't want to have such longstanding obligations weighing on them. It comes down to business decisions, not technical issues; technically speaking the spec allows for up to a 99 year registration period, though I'm not aware of any TLDs that support that. https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5731#section-2.5 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5731#section-2.5
        Ayesh 8y ago
        I recently read an HN thread about Romanian ccTLD registry selling domains for lifetime. They have stopped it and asked the former customers to pay up though.
        CydeWeys 8y ago
        And also ccTLDs can make up whatever rules they want, whereas gTLDs are all bound by the same common set of rules. There are many ccTLDs that don't even use EPP (the spec I linked to above).
      - manigandham 8y ago
        We already have enough sleazy domain squatters holding names for years and trading for ridiculous prices. Instead of long ownerships, we should have some way to prove you're actually using the domain after a certain number of years.
  - nikanj 8y ago
    Many of the new TLDs do their own domain squatting. Short, pronounceable domain names are flagged as "premium", and sold at a higher price. It's a nifty business hack actually, as unlike a 3rd party squatter, the TLD itself has no financial risk in upmarking domains.
fxfan 8y ago
The trend in browsers is being precise about standards and yet only yesterday google took an existing standard and tried to corrupt it. I'm not trying to be snarky and thanks foe answering questions but this particular comment was a non-answer.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  It sounded like they were referring to something specific, but didn't provide examples. I want to know exactly what they're worried about so that I can answer the question, but I haven't been given enough to go on. It sounds like they're worried about prices being jacked up by large amounts, but I'm not aware of that even having happened. Absent that, the current prices are what they are; pay them or don't, but you know what you're getting into.
  - nanna 8y ago
    I think they might be referring to Chrome's upcoming use of &targetText= for linking to specific words or paragraphs, which caused some controversy here yesterday. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19168442 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19168442
    - CydeWeys 8y ago
      I doubt that's it.