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>Verisign ... will increase the wholesale price it charges registrars for .com registrations and renewals from $7.85 to $8.39. It's 54 cents, in case anyone el

>Verisign ... will increase the wholesale price it charges registrars for .com registrations and renewals from $7.85 to $8.39. It's 54 cents, in case anyone else was wondering. Source: https://domainnamewire.com/2021/02/11/breaking-verisign-announces-com-price-hike-to-8-39/ https://domainnamewire.com/2021/02/11/breaking-verisign-anno...

tjbiddle 5y ago
Lol - So, a 7% raise. Totally reasonable even given standard inflation.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- tryptophan 5y ago
  It's not reasonable at all. Literally all they do is run a database. 50% profit margin. Insane. You only see numbers like that in a monopoly. They do not need the money at all. It's pure rent seeking.
  - herbst 5y ago
    I would argue that most, non Unicorn, tech companies run on 50% profit or more.
- ohashi 5y ago
  Cost to operate a registry, estimates are under $1/domain - costs have been decreasing. Why should VeriSign get an indefinite monopoly with a no bid contract that renews and allows price increases? There's no benefit to the internet as a whole, where .ORG at least is plausibly going to a non profit (as hard as they tried to sell off to private equity).
  - qPM9l3XJrF 5y ago
    Just to play devil's advocate here--if domains were cheaper to own, there would be more namesquatters
    - elil17 5y ago
      Unlike right now, where there’s one big namesquatter called “Verisign”. Domains worth over $8 have already been namesquatted. Those worth under $8 are being held ransom by Verisign. Making domain registration cheaper (via a price cap from ICANN or something) would only reduce the price of domain names for people who want to use them.
      - nikitaga 5y ago
        > Domains worth over $8 have already been namesquatted > Making domain registration cheaper would only reduce the price of domain names for people who want to use them. You don't see how those two statements contradict each other? Make registration $6, now domains that are worth between $6 and $8 will also be namesquatted. Reducing the price of something almost never results in less units sold, it's economics 101. Have you ever bought a domain from a namesquatter? Did you pay $8 for it? No, you didn't, you paid whatever the seller thought that domain was worth to you, which is a lot more. Nobody namesquats to sell domains for $8 or $20. Yet if Verisign had that domain, you would only have paid $8 for it. That's the difference between squatting, and listing a public price that is the same for everyone and for every domain. Verisign isn't squatting or ransoming anything no matter how much you may dislike them.
        elil17 5y ago
        It costs Verisign <$1 to issue a domain and they’re charging $8. It costs a domain squatter $8 to buy a domain and they charge $9 or more. It’s the exact same grift. If there’s a domain a squatter thought they could sell for $9 they’d buy it for $8 or $6, they’d make a profit either way. The only difference in name-squatting with lower prices is that one leech (Verisign) makes less money while another leech makes more.
  - silisili 5y ago
    As someone with industry knowledge, it's way, way under $1 per domain. It's little more than an xml parser, simple business logic and cron jobs, a database, and support. I imagine a single motivated person could do it themselves, minus support. Honestly, sending a single email is more tech intensive than registering a domain.
    - jolux 5y ago
      > xml parser now you're scaring me
      - silisili 5y ago
        Sadly, EPP is an XML protocol.
    - jart 5y ago
      There were a lot of people who thought like you and thought they could just whip up some perl scripts to do it. Then they all got hacked, and since when you hack a domain registry, you hack every domain it manages too, they'd usually snag a google.whatever domain and say haha we hacked google. Eventually Google got so angry about this happening that they sent a crack team of security experts to build a top-level domain registry the right way, and made it open source. https://github.com/google/nomulus https://github.com/google/nomulus It wasn't easy.
      - silisili 5y ago
        Um... none of that is even remotely true...source? There's no Perl script registry. There's very few registries in existence, and they don't get hacked on any cadence. In fact, Google was practically sending begging emails to my company asking for source trying to even understand the business.
- agallant 5y ago
  From the registrars I've checked, many are passing on a slightly larger price increase (e.g. a nice round number like $1). Granted that's on them as well as Verisign, but as others have noted it's increasing the price of something when the objective costs of operation have decreased.
- markdown 5y ago
  Nonsense! Costs of digital services trend downwards. Dropping 50% would be more reasonable. If they want to make money, take it from the fucking squatters selling every usable domain name for over $1k, putting them far out of reach of most humans.
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    One way to do this is to raise prices for everybody. Seriously who cares about paying an extra dollar for .com registration? Of all of the rent seeking exploitation in the world, this has to be among the least important.
- silisili 5y ago
  7% is the max allowed. Understand it means 7% per year until the contract is redone.
- bogomipz 5y ago
  Except inflation is nowhere near 7% nor has it been in more than 20 years.[1][2] Further, ICANN has allowed Verisign to increase wholesale domain pricing 7% year over year for four years followed by a two-year break. And then they can continue this cycle all over again for the length of the contract. In 2029 todays $8.40 .com domain will be $13.49. [1] https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/ https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-infl... [2] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/inflation-rate-cpi https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/inflation-ra...

tjbiddle 5y ago

Lol - So, a 7% raise. Totally reasonable even given standard inflation.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tryptophan 5y ago
It's not reasonable at all. Literally all they do is run a database. 50% profit margin. Insane. You only see numbers like that in a monopoly. They do not need the money at all. It's pure rent seeking.
- herbst 5y ago
  I would argue that most, non Unicorn, tech companies run on 50% profit or more.
ohashi 5y ago
Cost to operate a registry, estimates are under $1/domain - costs have been decreasing. Why should VeriSign get an indefinite monopoly with a no bid contract that renews and allows price increases? There's no benefit to the internet as a whole, where .ORG at least is plausibly going to a non profit (as hard as they tried to sell off to private equity).
- qPM9l3XJrF 5y ago
  Just to play devil's advocate here--if domains were cheaper to own, there would be more namesquatters
  - elil17 5y ago
    Unlike right now, where there’s one big namesquatter called “Verisign”. Domains worth over $8 have already been namesquatted. Those worth under $8 are being held ransom by Verisign. Making domain registration cheaper (via a price cap from ICANN or something) would only reduce the price of domain names for people who want to use them.
    - nikitaga 5y ago
      > Domains worth over $8 have already been namesquatted > Making domain registration cheaper would only reduce the price of domain names for people who want to use them. You don't see how those two statements contradict each other? Make registration $6, now domains that are worth between $6 and $8 will also be namesquatted. Reducing the price of something almost never results in less units sold, it's economics 101. Have you ever bought a domain from a namesquatter? Did you pay $8 for it? No, you didn't, you paid whatever the seller thought that domain was worth to you, which is a lot more. Nobody namesquats to sell domains for $8 or $20. Yet if Verisign had that domain, you would only have paid $8 for it. That's the difference between squatting, and listing a public price that is the same for everyone and for every domain. Verisign isn't squatting or ransoming anything no matter how much you may dislike them.
      - elil17 5y ago
        It costs Verisign <$1 to issue a domain and they’re charging $8. It costs a domain squatter $8 to buy a domain and they charge $9 or more. It’s the exact same grift. If there’s a domain a squatter thought they could sell for $9 they’d buy it for $8 or $6, they’d make a profit either way. The only difference in name-squatting with lower prices is that one leech (Verisign) makes less money while another leech makes more.
- silisili 5y ago
  As someone with industry knowledge, it's way, way under $1 per domain. It's little more than an xml parser, simple business logic and cron jobs, a database, and support. I imagine a single motivated person could do it themselves, minus support. Honestly, sending a single email is more tech intensive than registering a domain.
  - jolux 5y ago
    > xml parser now you're scaring me
    - silisili 5y ago
      Sadly, EPP is an XML protocol.
  - jart 5y ago
    There were a lot of people who thought like you and thought they could just whip up some perl scripts to do it. Then they all got hacked, and since when you hack a domain registry, you hack every domain it manages too, they'd usually snag a google.whatever domain and say haha we hacked google. Eventually Google got so angry about this happening that they sent a crack team of security experts to build a top-level domain registry the right way, and made it open source. https://github.com/google/nomulus https://github.com/google/nomulus It wasn't easy.
    - silisili 5y ago
      Um... none of that is even remotely true...source? There's no Perl script registry. There's very few registries in existence, and they don't get hacked on any cadence. In fact, Google was practically sending begging emails to my company asking for source trying to even understand the business.
agallant 5y ago
From the registrars I've checked, many are passing on a slightly larger price increase (e.g. a nice round number like $1). Granted that's on them as well as Verisign, but as others have noted it's increasing the price of something when the objective costs of operation have decreased.
markdown 5y ago
Nonsense! Costs of digital services trend downwards. Dropping 50% would be more reasonable. If they want to make money, take it from the fucking squatters selling every usable domain name for over $1k, putting them far out of reach of most humans.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  One way to do this is to raise prices for everybody. Seriously who cares about paying an extra dollar for .com registration? Of all of the rent seeking exploitation in the world, this has to be among the least important.
silisili 5y ago
7% is the max allowed. Understand it means 7% per year until the contract is redone.
bogomipz 5y ago
Except inflation is nowhere near 7% nor has it been in more than 20 years.[1][2] Further, ICANN has allowed Verisign to increase wholesale domain pricing 7% year over year for four years followed by a two-year break. And then they can continue this cycle all over again for the length of the contract. In 2029 todays $8.40 .com domain will be $13.49. [1] https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/ https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-infl... [2] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/inflation-rate-cpi https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/inflation-ra...