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I still can't get my head around why a .com costs $9.59 (plus registrar margin) There are 160 million registered .com domain names. I understand that operatin

I still can't get my head around why a .com costs $9.59 (plus registrar margin) There are 160 million registered .com domain names. I understand that operating root servers isn't free, but surely they don't cost $1.5 billion per year! Wikipedia's hosting costs are $3 million per year, for comparison.

ocdtrekkie 2y ago
Because it's a natural monopoly. Nobody ever got taken seriously with a .biz address. (.com is basically price-regulated because of this, FWIW, Verisign can't just raise prices whenever or however it wants. But obviously it's still a pretty sweet deal for them, I'd imagine.)
- dylan604 2y ago
  Hell, even .net will lose you traffic. If someone has your desired name with .com so that you use any other TLD, you will lose traffic. If your .com is taken by someone in the same line of work and not just a coincidental use of the same domain, then you'd be insane to not change the domain. I'm not sure how many people manually type domains in any more (I do though), and .com is muscle memory.
- scarab92 2y ago
  Sure, it's a natural monopoly, but it's owned by a non-profit (ICAAN), so where is all the money going?
- fc417fc802 2y ago
  If a system is built in a way that creates a monopoly I'm not sure it's legitimate to refer to it as "natural". The characteristic that defines natural monopolies is that there's no realistic (at least known) alternative way to go about things which isn't also a monopoly.
DoctorOW 2y ago
Only $0.18 goes to ICANN, the non-profit. The rest goes to the Verisign which is a publicly traded for-profit company which ultimately gets that $9.59. I bring this up because it of course _doesn't_ cost that much. Incidentally, Verisign posted $1.56 billion in revenue last year and spent about $1.21 billion on stock buybacks in the same time.
- scarab92 2y ago
  As I understand it, Verisign doesn't own the .com TLD, they are just a contracted service provider to ICANN. Which begs the question, why doesn't ICANN just replace Verisign them with a different authoritative register that charges much less?
  - notpushkin 2y ago
    Because that doesn’t solve the problem. The demand doesn’t go away if you charge less – if you charge $1/yr for .COMs, they will all be permanently squatted. (Well, like now, but worse!) We could use anti-scalping techniques, but that’s non-trivial to implement. Perhaps some name squatting policy? No idea how to enforce it though, especially without money.
    - scarab92 2y ago
      Fair enough, but even we use a floor price to disincentivise squatting, I'm not sure why we should gift those excess margins to a private company? Shouldn't ICANN collect that margin and use it for charitable purposes instead?
      - notpushkin 2y ago
        Yeah, that’s a good point. Then again, you can also that for any other gTLD (why should Google get the proceeds from .dev?), and that would be a valid question. I think the current system is inherently flawed... but it kinda works, and nobody wants to figure out the politics of fixing it – so I guess we’re stuck with it for a while.
        fc417fc802 2y ago
        > nobody wants to figure out the politics of fixing it The vast majority of people in the world have $0 on the line and no clue how these systems work. The majority who have an interest in fixing it have something like N×$10 per year on the line for a fairly small N. Those who don't want it fixed have billions on the line. It's not getting fixed anytime soon.
dylan604 2y ago
Of those 160 million, what percentage of them are on the 1-year renewal plans, and how many of them are on multi-year plans. I'm guessing the vast majority are yearly. It would be interesting how many of them never get re-registered after the first year
- nextts 2y ago
  Headline number trend is what matters. Yeah lots of failed projects but then lots of new projects to make up for it!
kelnos 2y ago
I agree that it's ridiculous, but absent some sort of regulation, things are not priced based on how much they cost the provider, but based on how much people are willing to pay. Even if they're unhappy about it.
- account42 2y ago
  The thing is there are supposed to be regulations. .com is not privately owned but a public good that is supposed to be regulated by ICANN with the interests of the public in mind.
notpushkin 2y ago
Just in case: you can get a .com for less than that nowadays, sometimes $3 for the first year (then transfer it back and forth for $5–7). Here are some price comparisons: https://tldes.com/com https://tldes.com/com, https://tld-list.com/tld/com https://tld-list.com/tld/com I assume some registrars sell these at a loss and expect to offset that by selling you WordPress Supreme Ultra Enterprise hosting for... $40/yr? No idea how this works.

ocdtrekkie 2y ago

Because it's a natural monopoly. Nobody ever got taken seriously with a .biz address. (.com is basically price-regulated because of this, FWIW, Verisign can't just raise prices whenever or however it wants. But obviously it's still a pretty sweet deal for them, I'd imagine.)

dylan604 2y ago
Hell, even .net will lose you traffic. If someone has your desired name with .com so that you use any other TLD, you will lose traffic. If your .com is taken by someone in the same line of work and not just a coincidental use of the same domain, then you'd be insane to not change the domain. I'm not sure how many people manually type domains in any more (I do though), and .com is muscle memory.
scarab92 2y ago
Sure, it's a natural monopoly, but it's owned by a non-profit (ICAAN), so where is all the money going?
fc417fc802 2y ago
If a system is built in a way that creates a monopoly I'm not sure it's legitimate to refer to it as "natural". The characteristic that defines natural monopolies is that there's no realistic (at least known) alternative way to go about things which isn't also a monopoly.

DoctorOW 2y ago

Only $0.18 goes to ICANN, the non-profit. The rest goes to the Verisign which is a publicly traded for-profit company which ultimately gets that $9.59. I bring this up because it of course _doesn't_ cost that much. Incidentally, Verisign posted $1.56 billion in revenue last year and spent about $1.21 billion on stock buybacks in the same time.

scarab92 2y ago
As I understand it, Verisign doesn't own the .com TLD, they are just a contracted service provider to ICANN. Which begs the question, why doesn't ICANN just replace Verisign them with a different authoritative register that charges much less?
- notpushkin 2y ago
  Because that doesn’t solve the problem. The demand doesn’t go away if you charge less – if you charge $1/yr for .COMs, they will all be permanently squatted. (Well, like now, but worse!) We could use anti-scalping techniques, but that’s non-trivial to implement. Perhaps some name squatting policy? No idea how to enforce it though, especially without money.
  - scarab92 2y ago
    Fair enough, but even we use a floor price to disincentivise squatting, I'm not sure why we should gift those excess margins to a private company? Shouldn't ICANN collect that margin and use it for charitable purposes instead?
    - notpushkin 2y ago
      Yeah, that’s a good point. Then again, you can also that for any other gTLD (why should Google get the proceeds from .dev?), and that would be a valid question. I think the current system is inherently flawed... but it kinda works, and nobody wants to figure out the politics of fixing it – so I guess we’re stuck with it for a while.
      - fc417fc802 2y ago
        > nobody wants to figure out the politics of fixing it The vast majority of people in the world have $0 on the line and no clue how these systems work. The majority who have an interest in fixing it have something like N×$10 per year on the line for a fairly small N. Those who don't want it fixed have billions on the line. It's not getting fixed anytime soon.

dylan604 2y ago

Of those 160 million, what percentage of them are on the 1-year renewal plans, and how many of them are on multi-year plans. I'm guessing the vast majority are yearly. It would be interesting how many of them never get re-registered after the first year

nextts 2y ago
Headline number trend is what matters. Yeah lots of failed projects but then lots of new projects to make up for it!

kelnos 2y ago

I agree that it's ridiculous, but absent some sort of regulation, things are not priced based on how much they cost the provider, but based on how much people are willing to pay. Even if they're unhappy about it.

account42 2y ago
The thing is there are supposed to be regulations. .com is not privately owned but a public good that is supposed to be regulated by ICANN with the interests of the public in mind.

notpushkin 2y ago

Just in case: you can get a .com for less than that nowadays, sometimes $3 for the first year (then transfer it back and forth for $5–7). Here are some price comparisons: https://tldes.com/com https://tldes.com/com, https://tld-list.com/tld/com https://tld-list.com/tld/com I assume some registrars sell these at a loss and expect to offset that by selling you WordPress Supreme Ultra Enterprise hosting for... $40/yr? No idea how this works.