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Remind HN: .com prices increase Sep 1, 2021

125 points by ohashi ↗ HN
VeriSign's price increase goes in effect September 1, 2021. This increase likely will be passed on by your registrar.

Good time to remind everyone that VeriSign has a monopoly granted by ICANN to raise prices indefinitely with zero competition.

60 comments

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RulerOf
>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-anno...

tjbiddle
Lol - So, a 7% raise. Totally reasonable even given standard inflation.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
tryptophan
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
I would argue that most, non Unicorn, tech companies run on 50% profit or more.
ohashi
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
Just to play devil's advocate here--if domains were cheaper to own, there would be more namesquatters
elil17
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
> 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
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.

nikitaga
You don't know what you're talking about. Squatters don't buy $8 domains to resell for $9, if they did, they would go out of business because the probability that their $8 domain will be purchased from them within a year (or ever) is far lower than 100%.

If a squatter manages to sell e.g. 10% of the domains they own in a given year, they'll break even – not even make a profit – if they sell those domains for $80 on average. In reality most squatted domains sell for more than that, easily hundreds or thousands of dollars. Such prices is why everyone hates squatters.

How much profit Verisign is making has zero relation to how much the domains should cost. ICANN could require Verisign to give most of their domain registration profit to some charity or even just require them to buy and shred currency if you don't trust charities. Either way that would remove excessive profit from Verisign without inviting even more squatters by reducing the price of domains.

qPM9l3XJrF
>Domains worth over $8 have already been namesquatted.

You mean "domains worth over $8/yr".

That's a big difference.

Anunayj
Actually I agree, ~$8 isn't bad for domain + Anyone who currently owns a domain can pay in advance for the next 10 years at the current price.

And ICANN has managed pricing quite well. Unlike SSL certificates were.

silisili
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
> xml parser

now you're scaring me

silisili
Sadly, EPP is an XML protocol.
jart
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 It wasn't easy.
silisili
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
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
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
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
7% is the max allowed. Understand it means 7% per year until the contract is redone.
bogomipz
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-infl...

[2] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/inflation-ra...

geocrasher
Shocked over a 54 cent increase? Remember: Domains used to cost $75/year.
georgyo
.com domains NEVER cost $75/year. In the 90s bad (but popular) registrars like Network Solutions got away with massive markups.

Registrars are still allowed to add a markup, just there is so much competition that doesn't really happen any more.

EDIT: Correction, Network Solution was the _only_ registrar between 1995 and 1998. For three years they charged insane amounts, $100 for 2yrs. Before that it was free, and after that it was about $8 from other registrars.

handrous
Huh—my first domain name shows it was registered in 2002, and I was sure NetSol was the only option at the time, as in, not that I looked and didn't find others, but I looked and the answer was a definitive "NetSol is the only one". IIRC I paid around $70. My recollection was that all the new, cheap registers didn't come about until later rule changes, maybe a couple years later, not all the way back in '98. I'm also pretty sure I remember reading about the change on Slashdot, and I don't think I was reading it yet before 2000.

[EDIT] I must have paid for two years (maybe first time registrations had to be two years, at the time?) at a $34.99/yr rate, to get that $70 figure I had in my head, in 2002.

dylan604
I've noticed a lot of registrars try this where they select a multi-year option as default.
merlyn
I've checked my records, I registered domains at the start of January 2002 through OpenSRS for my customers. OpenSRS have celebrated 20 years according to their blog.

I don't remember the exact year from handoff from NetSol to ICANN approved registars, but some of that work started in September 1998. I found some sources that state sometime during 2001 was when NetSol had it's exclusive registrar service ended.

herbst
In the German room there are still hosters that get away with monthly domain costs that often are like half of the actual yearly cost. Per month.
edoceo
Wasnt there like two FOSS projects trying to make an alternate DNS? It was so anyone (almost) could register anything (almost)

Edit: one is https://www.opennic.org/

SilverRed
There was namecoin. The problem with anyone registering anything for free is that people will immediately hoard every usable name and try to resell them on for a profit. With domain name fees, you can only hoard the ones you reasonably believe will be in high demand and sell for a profit.

With how many TLDs there are now, it's easy to find an unused domain name especially if you use your countries local tld.

kristopolous
There's probably decent economic models to prevent "scalping" or at least make it way harder.

For instance, you make the property less alienable so the "seller" in a transfer is still just as legally liable if the new "owner" gets in court somehow due to the new content at the domain.

Then people wouldn't sell it, that's the point. They may transfer it in an acquisition or name change and in those cases, such legal liability is redundant. If company A buys B then company B Is company A

Another example: for abandonment it's not the first person that sees it snatching it up. Instead say, the first 60 days after lapse, interested parties register in a pool and then one is randomly selected.

There's vastly superior ways to do this then relying on naive price signals

exdsq
Just charge people for a domain - simplest method there is.
SilverRed
Agreed. The vast majority of people would prefer to pay the few dollars per year for the simple current system over some complex system to hand out names based on how much they are deserved.
tofukid
Handshake uses an auction, so everyone has a chance to get the TLD they want, if multiple people want it. That seems the most practical solution.
SilverRed
This seems like the worst system. Now if you want a domain, you have to broadcast your intent before you get it. So scalpers can watch all domains being put up for auction and buy it before you. Vs the current system where you just look for one that is free and can grab it immediately.
tofukid
Both systems are arbitrary, but only the auction system provides for multiple people to contest the same domain.

There’s no decentralized method to prevent scalping. Scalping can happen whether it’s first-come-first-serve or auction.

SilverRed
Right now you can not easily scalp the current domain system. If I wanted to buy a domain, I can check which ones are free and buy it immediately. No one could know I wanted that domain before I had already reserved it for myself. But if I had to trigger an auction for the domain. That is broadcasting to the world "Hey, someone wants this domain. Go buy it and resell it to them"
tofukid
https://handshake.org/ is a decentralized peer-to-peer replacement for DNS root zone, with existing TLD’s reserved for previous owners.

”Handshake is a decentralized, permissionless naming protocol where every peer is validating and in charge of managing the root DNS naming zone with the goal of creating an alternative to existing Certificate Authorities and naming systems. Names on the internet (top level domains, social networking handles, etc.) ultimately rely upon centralized actors with full control over a system which are relied upon to be honest, as they are vulnerable to hacking, censorship, and corruption. Handshake aims to experiment with new ways the internet can be more secure, resilient, and socially useful with a peer-to-peer system validated by the network's participants.”

edoceo
Yes! Thanks, that was the other one.
paxys
.com and domain registration in general has a lot of problems, but an $8/year fee isn't one of them.
MattGaiser
Off I go to think of another domain to buy that I likely won’t use.
systemvoltage
I can't be the only one! What websites do you use to find good domains?

I use the following:

- Dotomator - nothing like it, https://www.dotomator.com/

- Namechk - social media check, https://namechk.com/

ChrisArchitect
.com aside, I've been on the hunt lately for something general purpose for some misc projects and been really dismayed at difficulty in finding something available. Like there are a thousand TLDs now but for the extensions that are shorter/general all the reasonably also-shorter names are taken or offered at stupid premium prices. Really sucks holding me back from executing some side projects because hung up on the domain choice. Was just thinking to myself how it's shitty when some new project I saw by someone today was cool work but had to live on some .pizza domain and thought that could be better. Sigh.
aembleton
If you've already got a domain, then just use a subdomain. The domain name is probably the least important thing that is stopping you from executing side projects.
ChrisArchitect
yeah, will use subdomains for sure but don't have the top-level yet. Need something general purpose and like I said, pretty hard to find something tech/project/net related
cpach
My 2¢: Don’t overthink it.

Maybe look at .net and .se domains. If you can’t think of a name, just go through old Greek words or something like that. You’ll find something that works well enough! (^_^)

ralmidani
VeriSign’s obvious greed aside, I actually wish .com domain registration cost more. For a party that has a genuine interest in operating a .com website, something like $30/year is usually a drop in the bucket. Tripling the cost of buying a domain will be most damaging to those who snap them up just so they can turn around and sell them.

Or maybe we could treat domains similarly to how many US states treat houses, giving people a break on their first domain, and ramping up the taxes as they purchase more?

andrewmcwatters
Trust me, you're not hurting those folks. You're hurting those who have legitimate uses to lease domain names.

It's like saying you want to raise the price of housing to keep landlords from buying up all of the properties and forcing locals to rent.

You're not hurting the people abusing the system by doing that.

postalrat
It's more like saying you want to raise the property taxes to keep landlords from buying up all the properties.
ohashi
We're seeing that doesn't work that effectively in most places. It also is giving the same pricing to every human being across the globe. In the richer countries, sure, maybe $30/year isn't a lot, but in poorer ones that could be an onerous barrier to entry.
Anunayj
Oh I agree, though I think this can be solved by having a alternative TLD that employs some tactics to combat domain squatting + provides domains for cheap/free and the .free TLD is a good contender for it.
quintes
Thanks for sharing this.

I disagree with the others who’ve stated it’s just a small increase and maybe domain prices should increase, for non dollar currencies you’re pricing people out