7 ms·

"recommended retail price of $0.99" Am I getting cynical? Seems like no businesses are going to use this recommended price.

by warent 5y ago

hadlock 5y ago
As a teenager making $5.50 and later a whopping $5.75/hr working in retail, I never bought a domain or hosting, as they were outside of my budget. At the time (late 90s) domains were $14.95 on sale, and regularly $19.95. It wasn't until college that I had enough available resources to buy a domain, and at the time I went ahead and bought 5 years. I probably missed out on 3 or 4 years of my life when I had virtually unlimited time to work on things like programming. Had $1 domains existed in 1997, I'd probably have ended up as a PHP/Perl guy, and gone on an entirely different life route. Nowadays I have six or seven domains, two for public facing stuff, and the rest are for a rotating cast of personal projects where subdomains don't make a lot of sense. But my life wasn't always like this where I can afford multiple vanity domains. For big chunks of the world, $10/year is a significant startup cost when AWS and GCP have free tiers.
- code_duck 5y ago
  It was worse than that. I recall domains being $70 for 2 years. This is confirmed in the Wikipedia page for Network Solutions, who held a monopoly on registration at the time. “Following the acquisition by SAIC, the NSF gave Network Solutions authority to charge for domain name registrations. Network Solutions imposed a charge of $100 for two years registration. 30% of this revenue went to the NSF to create an "Internet Intellectual Infrastructure Fund." In 1997, a lawsuit was filed charging Network Solutions with antitrust violations with regard to domain names. The 30% of the registration fee that went to the NSF was ruled by a court to be an illegal tax. This led to a reduction in the domain name registration fee to $70 (for two years).”
  - warent 5y ago
    Wow! I never heard about this. It happened only a few years after I was born. Back in '97, probably only the nerdiest of nerds would have cared about it, so I'm surprised that the judge(s) over this case ruled correctly given how new the technology was. Is there an article about it? Seems like a fascinating topic
    - code_duck 5y ago
      I think the case was fairly straightforward as it was more about established business law than technology. The internet was already getting rather important by 1997, but true that it was a couple years away from the general public’s consciousness.
  - stevekemp 5y ago
    I paid something like $79/year to register steve.org.uk via network solutions. My memory is that I struggled for a while in registering it, and I had to find a local fax machine to send some kind of "proof" to them too.
- kalleboo 5y ago
  As a teenager back in 2000 I got my .com domain for free from namezero. When I got into university and got my first credit card, the first thing I used it for was to buy my domain out to own it myself (I think it was like $20-$30 from Network Solutions) These days there are so many free DynDNS services out there that I don't know if a $1 domain on some weird TLD is that enticing.
gruez 5y ago
domain registrars are a pretty competitive business, so I'm pretty confident that at least a few would offer it at that price.
- dzhiurgis 5y ago
  That's approaching credit card transaction fee. What do you get in turn? Identity verification? Nope. Broadcasting your personal details to every spammer on the internet? Yes.

"recommended retail price of $0.99" Am I getting cynical? Seems like no businesses are going to use this recommended price.

by warent 5y ago

"recommended retail price of $0.99" Am I getting cynical? Seems like no businesses are going to use this recommended price.

hadlock 5y ago

As a teenager making $5.50 and later a whopping $5.75/hr working in retail, I never bought a domain or hosting, as they were outside of my budget. At the time (late 90s) domains were $14.95 on sale, and regularly $19.95. It wasn't until college that I had enough available resources to buy a domain, and at the time I went ahead and bought 5 years. I probably missed out on 3 or 4 years of my life when I had virtually unlimited time to work on things like programming. Had $1 domains existed in 1997, I'd probably have ended up as a PHP/Perl guy, and gone on an entirely different life route. Nowadays I have six or seven domains, two for public facing stuff, and the rest are for a rotating cast of personal projects where subdomains don't make a lot of sense. But my life wasn't always like this where I can afford multiple vanity domains. For big chunks of the world, $10/year is a significant startup cost when AWS and GCP have free tiers.

code_duck 5y ago
It was worse than that. I recall domains being $70 for 2 years. This is confirmed in the Wikipedia page for Network Solutions, who held a monopoly on registration at the time. “Following the acquisition by SAIC, the NSF gave Network Solutions authority to charge for domain name registrations. Network Solutions imposed a charge of $100 for two years registration. 30% of this revenue went to the NSF to create an "Internet Intellectual Infrastructure Fund." In 1997, a lawsuit was filed charging Network Solutions with antitrust violations with regard to domain names. The 30% of the registration fee that went to the NSF was ruled by a court to be an illegal tax. This led to a reduction in the domain name registration fee to $70 (for two years).”
- warent 5y ago
  Wow! I never heard about this. It happened only a few years after I was born. Back in '97, probably only the nerdiest of nerds would have cared about it, so I'm surprised that the judge(s) over this case ruled correctly given how new the technology was. Is there an article about it? Seems like a fascinating topic
  - code_duck 5y ago
    I think the case was fairly straightforward as it was more about established business law than technology. The internet was already getting rather important by 1997, but true that it was a couple years away from the general public’s consciousness.
- stevekemp 5y ago
  I paid something like $79/year to register steve.org.uk via network solutions. My memory is that I struggled for a while in registering it, and I had to find a local fax machine to send some kind of "proof" to them too.
kalleboo 5y ago
As a teenager back in 2000 I got my .com domain for free from namezero. When I got into university and got my first credit card, the first thing I used it for was to buy my domain out to own it myself (I think it was like $20-$30 from Network Solutions) These days there are so many free DynDNS services out there that I don't know if a $1 domain on some weird TLD is that enticing.

gruez 5y ago

domain registrars are a pretty competitive business, so I'm pretty confident that at least a few would offer it at that price.

dzhiurgis 5y ago
That's approaching credit card transaction fee. What do you get in turn? Identity verification? Nope. Broadcasting your personal details to every spammer on the internet? Yes.