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“I think calling them a monopoly at this point is an unfair comparison. Verisign is no more a monopoly than your Ford dealer is a monopoly,” Redl said. “It’s no

“I think calling them a monopoly at this point is an unfair comparison. Verisign is no more a monopoly than your Ford dealer is a monopoly,” Redl said. “It’s not the original days of the internet where that was the only top-level domain.” It is bothers me that the monopoly is excused this way.

jonathankoren 3y ago
TLDs may sort of be fungible, but not really. No one looks at widgets.com and widgets.tube as identical, whereas no one really cares about one car versus another beyond feelings of personal worth.
- listenallyall 3y ago
  I think Hyatt and Hilton have a lot stronger brand names than "a friendly lady named Shiela" but Airbnb built an empire on the latter.
  - jonathankoren 3y ago
    Comeback when anyone builds an iconic brand around .$BRAND_NAME or even .museum Seriously. It’s not an issue of brand recognition. It’s an issue of decades of basic phishing defense.
    - listenallyall 3y ago
      bit.ly
Joeri 3y ago
When I live somewhere and the owner of the water company decides they need to increase prices 9% despite having lower costs, they are definitely exercising their monopoly, even when there are several other utilities coming to my home and so many other kinds of beverage I might acquire.
- joshuamcginnis 3y ago
  How do you know they have lower costs? My local water municipality recently increased prices citing increased pricing across the entire spectrum of equipment, materials, chemicals and labor. This in addition to state-mandated improvements to waste water management that must be completed within a certain timeframe.
  - fifteen1506 3y ago
    If you're in Britain most likely your water company has been saddled with debt [so it could pay more to its shareholders] and is in serious economical difficulties.
CameronNemo 3y ago
Also are Ford dealers not doing very similar anticompetitive things? Demanding high markups over msrp for electric vehicles, or refusing to offer them altogether, for example.
thayne 3y ago
If you already have a .com domain that all your customers are familiar with, its not like you can just switch to a different domain. _Maybe_ I could excuse this if it was only for new registrations, but left the price for renewals the same, at least for existing domain owners.
- throitallaway 3y ago
  If you have customers familiar with your domain, annual domain renewal is an extremely negligible cost to your business.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 3y ago
    Unless the price suddenly increases, say, 20000x.
    - Spivak 3y ago
      Then you bite the bullet send out an email to your customers that you're moving domains and why, rip the band-aid off and move on with your life.
      - Andrew_nenakhov 3y ago
        Unless you are hosting an email service and now all your users have to bite the bullet and send out emails to all their contacts, right.
        Spivak 3y ago
        Yep, there is no magic bullet to "thing I rent from someone else who has nigh complete discretion on price decides to price me out." You either regulate (which is what happened here that limits the price hikes to 7% yoy) or figure something out. If you can't leave or retaliate then you're basically proving explicitly why they're able to increase prices to the point of ruining you. At a certain price you just pony up the $200k to ICANN become your own registrar and then actually own your domains.
hedora 3y ago
Well, if you don't like Verisign's service, you can always move one county over, and deal with a different TLD domain registrar for .com, just like with your Ford dealer. (As an aside, I'd pay for a better-curated DNS infrastructure. For instance, google's font domains of whatever could just resolve to something federated, and that has TLS certs that are trusted by the alternative infrastructure. Google's chain of trust could be on a certificate revocation list.)
- tg180 3y ago
  I hope that someone sooner or later will be able to propose an alternative model to the current DNS infrastructure. Exceeding the current limits and the abuses that derive from it is certainly something extremely difficult to achieve, but I think there's a market in trying to fix the status quo.
- wmf 3y ago
  I'm not sure if this is a joke, but it's not correct. Verisign handles all .com domains; all the different registrars are just frontends to Verisign.
sva_ 3y ago
That comparison makes no sense. All TLDs in this case would be equivalent to all car brands. (All car brands => Ford) <=> (All TLDs => .com)
benbristow 3y ago
It is a monopoly. - .com domains have the brand-recognition and trust behind them. Other TLDs still feel 'knock-off' especially for lesser technically aware people. Would you trust myshop.com or myshop.xyz more?
paulddraper 3y ago
Well, I can own a Ford.
eclipticplane 3y ago
When you have a monopoly, you spend all of your time explaining why you don't have a monopoly. When you don't have a monopoly, you spend all your time building toward a monopoly.
davewashere 3y ago
"Companies that don’t want to pay Verisign’s price hikes can choose an address ending in .biz or .info, for example." A real-life "we have TLDs at home" from someone who has probably never seen the related meme.

jonathankoren 3y ago

TLDs may sort of be fungible, but not really. No one looks at widgets.com and widgets.tube as identical, whereas no one really cares about one car versus another beyond feelings of personal worth.

listenallyall 3y ago
I think Hyatt and Hilton have a lot stronger brand names than "a friendly lady named Shiela" but Airbnb built an empire on the latter.
- jonathankoren 3y ago
  Comeback when anyone builds an iconic brand around .$BRAND_NAME or even .museum Seriously. It’s not an issue of brand recognition. It’s an issue of decades of basic phishing defense.
  - listenallyall 3y ago
    bit.ly

Joeri 3y ago

When I live somewhere and the owner of the water company decides they need to increase prices 9% despite having lower costs, they are definitely exercising their monopoly, even when there are several other utilities coming to my home and so many other kinds of beverage I might acquire.

joshuamcginnis 3y ago
How do you know they have lower costs? My local water municipality recently increased prices citing increased pricing across the entire spectrum of equipment, materials, chemicals and labor. This in addition to state-mandated improvements to waste water management that must be completed within a certain timeframe.
- fifteen1506 3y ago
  If you're in Britain most likely your water company has been saddled with debt [so it could pay more to its shareholders] and is in serious economical difficulties.

CameronNemo 3y ago

Also are Ford dealers not doing very similar anticompetitive things? Demanding high markups over msrp for electric vehicles, or refusing to offer them altogether, for example.

thayne 3y ago

If you already have a .com domain that all your customers are familiar with, its not like you can just switch to a different domain. _Maybe_ I could excuse this if it was only for new registrations, but left the price for renewals the same, at least for existing domain owners.

throitallaway 3y ago
If you have customers familiar with your domain, annual domain renewal is an extremely negligible cost to your business.
- Andrew_nenakhov 3y ago
  Unless the price suddenly increases, say, 20000x.
  - Spivak 3y ago
    Then you bite the bullet send out an email to your customers that you're moving domains and why, rip the band-aid off and move on with your life.
    - Andrew_nenakhov 3y ago
      Unless you are hosting an email service and now all your users have to bite the bullet and send out emails to all their contacts, right.
      - Spivak 3y ago
        Yep, there is no magic bullet to "thing I rent from someone else who has nigh complete discretion on price decides to price me out." You either regulate (which is what happened here that limits the price hikes to 7% yoy) or figure something out. If you can't leave or retaliate then you're basically proving explicitly why they're able to increase prices to the point of ruining you. At a certain price you just pony up the $200k to ICANN become your own registrar and then actually own your domains.

hedora 3y ago

Well, if you don't like Verisign's service, you can always move one county over, and deal with a different TLD domain registrar for .com, just like with your Ford dealer. (As an aside, I'd pay for a better-curated DNS infrastructure. For instance, google's font domains of whatever could just resolve to something federated, and that has TLS certs that are trusted by the alternative infrastructure. Google's chain of trust could be on a certificate revocation list.)

tg180 3y ago
I hope that someone sooner or later will be able to propose an alternative model to the current DNS infrastructure. Exceeding the current limits and the abuses that derive from it is certainly something extremely difficult to achieve, but I think there's a market in trying to fix the status quo.
wmf 3y ago
I'm not sure if this is a joke, but it's not correct. Verisign handles all .com domains; all the different registrars are just frontends to Verisign.

sva_ 3y ago

That comparison makes no sense. All TLDs in this case would be equivalent to all car brands. (All car brands => Ford) <=> (All TLDs => .com)

benbristow 3y ago

It is a monopoly. - .com domains have the brand-recognition and trust behind them. Other TLDs still feel 'knock-off' especially for lesser technically aware people. Would you trust myshop.com or myshop.xyz more?

paulddraper 3y ago

Well, I can own a Ford.

eclipticplane 3y ago

When you have a monopoly, you spend all of your time explaining why you don't have a monopoly. When you don't have a monopoly, you spend all your time building toward a monopoly.

davewashere 3y ago

"Companies that don’t want to pay Verisign’s price hikes can choose an address ending in .biz or .info, for example." A real-life "we have TLDs at home" from someone who has probably never seen the related meme.