back to article Dot-com web addresses prices to swell, thanks to sweetheart deal between Uncle Sam, Verisign

The planet's 138 million dot-com addresses are going to get significantly more expensive to renew over the next decade thanks to a contract signed between dot-com operator Verisign and the US government. New dot-com domains are also set to cost more. The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information …

  1. JohnFen

    Can someone explain this to me?

    ""ccTLDs, new gTLDs, and the use of social media have created a more dynamic DNS marketplace," and so Verisign needs the additional pricing flexibility to compete in the market."

    This makes exactly zero sense to me. Can anyone explain what the logic here is?

    1. whitepines
      Devil

      Re: Can someone explain this to me?

      Rough translation: As people that can move less established brands to new TLDs stop paying us, we need to soak the people stuck on our TLD for more and more money to keep our wallets fat.

      Clear enough?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Can someone explain this to me?

        Every so often, in the dark recesses of the night, I like to holler "DRAIN THE SWAMP!", then giggle mirthlessly at the tawdry reality of this year. Kieren did a nice job here, dropping that acid pearl in the final sentence that Verisign had managed to stuff the sole opponent's mouth with silver.

        1. a pressbutton

          Re: Can someone explain this to me?

          well, that drainey swampey thing seems to be going just fine so far in the us

          ... if you live in a swamp and like being wet.

        2. Roq D. Kasba

          Re: Can someone explain this to me?

          @Mongo I think you mean "repopulate the swamp"

      2. JohnFen

        Re: Can someone explain this to me?

        That makes sense, but doesn't sound like the sort of thing they'd intend to say publicly. So what message were they trying to publicly convey?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Can someone explain this to me?

      "Verisign needs the additional pricing flexibility to compete in the market."

      Err - hang on. Competing means cutting prices to stay competitive, not increasing them.

      It is just cynical and blatant lies to pretend this is anything other than pigs at the trough again.

      Yet another crank to the rising pressure for a New Internet to dump DNS and go with a more open-maintained resource naming system.

      These pigs may be grubbing up today's dinner, but they are also digging their own grave.

    3. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

      Re: Can someone explain this to me?

      I think it must be marketinggobbledygook?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Verisign runs a monopoly

    No doubt terminally stupid Trump voters will try to justify the fact they will have to pay more is actually a good thing.

    1. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

      Re: Verisign runs a monopoly

      I'm sure the .com addresses are disproportionally populated by "globalists" (code word for "jews").

  3. ma1010
    FAIL

    Yes, WE lose

    The only people that lose out are the millions of consumers and businesses that will have to pay...

    Isn't that kind the way it's been, pretty consistently, with everything the current government does? Our government and big corporations are consistently working together to screw us until there's nothing left except the feudal lords and the serfs. Welcome to the 21st century!

    1. Daniel Hall

      Re: Yes, WE lose

      Your government, not 'the' government,

      Dont ever include government in a sentence without clarifying that it has nothing to do with OUR government.

      YOUR government are a bunch of twits.

  4. Christoph

    "until there's nothing left except the feudal lords and the serfs."

    I suspect they're aiming for something more along the line of Eloi and Morlocks. Without realising how that ended up for the Eloi.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: how that ended up for the Eloi

      I.e., the Eloi did pretty well in the end (for those who missed the reference).

  5. Richard Simpson

    .com is for international companies

    Personally I can't claim to be too fussed by this. The .com TLD is (at least technically) for international companies who can clearly afford to spend the renewal fee. If other people want a .com then I don't see that even $10 per year is a significant cost and if it is then there is no shortage of other far more appropriate TLDs available such as .org (if you activity really is international) or a country specific one such as the .org.uk that I use for my personal domain.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: .com is for international companies

      Whilst I think this goes against all laws of Capitalism... i.e. competition should push costs down, not up.

      My first .com domain cost me around $40 per year (almost 20 years ago), with $20 a year for DNS and finally $240 a year for hosting (giving me a whopping 20MB of storage), so I paid around $300 a per year in total.

      Since then my salary has more than quadrupled, also my domain and hosting costs have massively dropped (about $100 per year for couple of VMs) - So I won't complain about paying $10!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: .com is for international companies

        "Since then my salary has more than quadrupled, also my domain and hosting costs have massively dropped (about $100 per year for couple of VMs) - So I won't complain about paying $10!"

        In 1950 a TV would have cost over £200 twice the average annual salary in UK. In today's inflation corrected price maybe £6000 for the TV and salary over £20,000 so by your logic I should be happy to pay £40,000 for a TV.

    2. Aitor 1

      Re: .com is for international companies

      Yo pay 10$ for something that costs Verisign less than 0.10$. Not ok, as they have a gvnt monopoly.

      1. K

        Re: .com is for international companies

        @Aitor 1, production costs have little bearing, by many standards $10 is cheap for a FQDN, last time I checked for a .io domain, it was $60 per year. As for markups, well welcome to capitalism -

        An extra large McDonalds coke costs 2c to make, most people are willing to spent $1+

        An Apple iPhone 10 costs about $240, yet people are willing to spend £1200 for one

        The list is endless.. though admittedly I can't think of any more (it's 9am Sunday morning)

        But the point is, by your argument, you will never buy anything - in addition, from my outsider perspective, is seems monopoly is how the US works, especially concerning everything ISP, Telecom and Internet.

        1. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

          Re: .com is for international companies

          "An Apple iPhone 10 costs about $240"

          Sure. Labour is free, as are factories, and development costs.

      2. Nattrash

        Re: .com is for international companies

        Indeed.

        So think about this; if .com is for international companies, why is an US institute running it? Why is US government defining the rules about it? Seems about time that "the internet" becomes an international, in stead of an US "sure we graciously allow you to use it, but always remember it's actually ours" resource. So no better place to start, to hand this whole "registration" stuff into international hands. And no, don't ask me to define international. It's weekend, just read this before going out to the pub, so can not be bothered with this now...

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: .com is for international companies

          "...why is an US institute running it?"

          All your .com are belong to U.S.

    3. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

      Re: .com is for international companies

      Bollocks. I've used a .com email address for 20 years. On and off for commercial purposes, in my name.

  6. doublelayer Silver badge

    Probably won't matter much

    I get my domains through gandi.net because they have treated me fairly and make it clear what they do and how much I pay for it. There, a .com costs $15.50/year, which seems fair to me, especially as I usually can't find out how much something costs from other registrars. So we'll see if they increase their prices when verisign does. In general, I don't think domain prices in this area cause much of a problem. It's still relatively cheap for people earning an income. For students or those needing a temporary domain, the landscape is not as easy, but they probably wouldn't be buying a .com anyway. Of course, if prices increased a lot, which I'm sure verisign would be more than happy to do, it could stop being fair to smallish companies. Even now, unless you're living in a country whose CCTLD is actually used there, .com is the most accepted for companies.

    1. Joseph Slabaugh

      Re: Probably won't matter much

      Well, if you are looking to save about half your money instead of paying that much, try NameSilo and use the coupon code DN to get a dollar off the normal 8.88 price (It is currently 6.99 so you can reg a name now for 5.99) and then here is a tip for all the people that are able to do it, RENEW your domain names for AS LONG AS YOU CAN! I have some of my 170 names renewed for 10 years. That saves you from having to worry about these price jumps every year.

  7. -tim
    Pint

    Say what?

    "Given the enormous value built up behind most dot-coms..."

    And all this time I thought most of the 138 mill dot coms were useless. 1.8 million are just all 4 letter combinations.

    At least domains aren't $100 for 2 years like it was long ago.

    1. Spamfast
      FAIL

      Re: Say what?

      1.8 million are just all 4 letter combinations.

      26 to the power 4 is 456976, not 1.8 million.

      (If you want to include IDNs then there are dozens of accented Latin characters used in European languages so you'd need a hell of a lot more that 1.8 million.)

      1. Chris 244

        Re: Say what?

        Maybe he meant alphanumeric? 36^4 gets us pretty close...

        1. Spamfast
          Happy

          Re: Say what?

          Well ...

          Maybe he meant alphanumeric?

          Last time I checked, the word 'letter [of the alphabet]' didn't include Arabic numerals.

          36^4 gets us pretty close...

          It gets us to 1679616 - still over a million or 9% short.

          Maybe I should be more charitable. ;-)

    2. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

      Re: Say what?

      They never cost $50 per year, unless you stupidly wanted to pay that.

  8. luminous
    Facepalm

    Optional

    Well er... which is it?

    "Verisign needs the additional pricing flexibility to compete in the market"

    "Verisign runs a monopoly with little real competition"

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    republicans...

    > This being 2018, the NTIA announcement was

    > tinged with pro-Trump and anti-Obama messaging.

    ... either making childish quips, or inciting white terrorism

  10. WibbleMe

    Well you know its called .loose customers for other of the hundereds of .tld's out there. No one forces us to buy .com's when you can have a .cheaper

    1. Joseph Slabaugh

      Only problem is that .cheaper is not going to get .traffic.

    2. Pen-y-gors

      Yes, but, No, but...buying dot com for a new venture is open to competition from the new tlds. But renewing the existing dot com your business has used for 25 years is not open to competition. Are you going to switch all your email addresses to a new domain to save $2 a year, or $2000 a year? Short and curlies is the technical term.

      The true spirit of US capitalism would allow multiple companies to sell and manage .com, with a simple single common database to ensure that two registrars don't sell the same domain. Let them set a price based on their management costs, and compete with each other.

      But having said that, when I first registered my .co.uk in the late 90s, it cost something like £70 for two years. Should be back to that again pretty soon.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Any guesses what 123REG will be doing any day now?

    On their past record I expect this will be their justification for a price hike well above 4% p.a.

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