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Yes, marking domains as "Premium" is very common, it's not just Google that does it. I registered a .sbs domain for a couple dollars the first year, and they w
by KomoD 4y ago
Yes, marking domains as "Premium" is very common, it's not just Google that does it.
I registered a .sbs domain for a couple dollars the first year, and they want $200-300/yr from me now.
- davchana 4y agoMy lastname.sbs was a dollar or two for 1st year. $200 2nd year. Understandable, but still its bad. Good thing I didn't use it for something big, being lazy paid.
- metadat 4y agoCan you transfer it to a less greedy registrar? Or is it always a TLD-wide issue? This is highway robbery.. maybe even worse than being robbed. Imagine if your mobile phone plan rate could vary on a floating basis year by year depending on how "premium" the carrier decides your number is. Gross.
- thebooktocome 4y agoChinese mobile carriers used to (and may still) do exactly this. Numbers with multiple 8’s were more valuable because 8 is lucky, whereas a single 4 (a homophone for “death”) meant a reasonable discount.
- metadat 4y agoIt's also a thing with US-based numbers, e.g. repeating digits. However, the pricing not variable year over year, and may even be only a one-time fee if at all. Once you are assigned the number, it's yours and the annual reservation price doesn't change significantly. This instance is straight up Google acting in bad faith with the bait and switch. Are they really that desperate to make a few extra bucks? What PM decided this was a good idea? Day by day, Big-G is burning every ounce of public goodwill they ever had, speedily on their way to sinking down to FB Meta territory.
- DelightOne 4y agoOne can argue scalpers expecting 3000 for a domain means the domain is premium-enough to be worth that renewal.
- KomoD 4y agoI'm pretty sure it's TLD-wide basically all/most of the time.
- simfree 4y agoIt's usually a choose your own frontend registrar for the TLD. Whether that is Gandi, Namecheap, Google Domains, Cloudflare, etc. But the TLDs fix the price underneath, registrars are just resellers.
- warbler73 4y ago
- tdeck 4y agoICANN could have just prohibited registrars from doing this, but it seems like the neo-TLD thing is just a cash grab for them so they probably don't mind.
- cubesnooper 4y agoI don’t exactly like it, but isn’t it an effective measure to reduce scalping? So many .com domains are owned by entities who bought piles of dictionary words just to slap them on a SEO ads page, only willing to part with them for exorbitant prices. What better means are there to fight these people who insert themselves into the internet namespace to siphon money while providing zero value?
- lupire 4y agoUnless the money goes to help the Internet somehow, it is still going to scalpers, but only a few billionaires instead of anyone who is willing to speculate.
- noduerme 4y agoMaybe HN can pool together to form a non-scalping, dev-friendly TLD.
- koolba 4y agoWhy does it even have to be a TLD? You have have a subdomain of an existing TLD. Kind of like the dynamic DNS services that give you your-custom-name.foo.example.com.
- wiremonger 4y agoHere’s another perspective. We own voltive.com. It cost us $28k. “Us” is me and my partner, small business owners with families and bills, working to build something of value in the world. We bought the domain from someone who had never used it for anything. Is it just that some guy fleeced us for $28k by squatting on that domain for 20 years at $12/year when we were actually trying to do something productive with the name? I certainly don’t think so.
- noduerme 4y agoI've never heard of .sbs. What does it mean? In junior high after P.E. class we would joke that we had SBS - sweaty ball syndrome - that acronym has always stuck with my friends.
- KomoD 4y ago"Special Broadcasting Service", belongs to the "Special Broadcasting Service Corporation"
- noduerme 4y agoHah. Wow. At this point I feel like we should just do away with new TLDs altogether and let anyone register any domain with any ending they want, if it's available. The idea that you can buy a TLD and then dole out domains if you have enough capital just seems antithetical to the ideal of an open internet. Unless you're a country, I guess.
- chillfox 4y agoI hate the practice, it’s scummy behaviour. One of my domains got hit by it and now I can’t even move it because it’s market as premium.