Elizabeth Warren calls for crackdown on Internet “monopoly” you’ve never heard of
Senator wants to investigate whether VeriSign is ripping off customers and violating antitrust laws.
You're viewing a single thread.
Tldr: Verisign, the registrar of the .com tld. They have been jacking up domain prices.
Year,Wholesale Price (USD)
undefined
2012,$7.85 2013,$7.85 2014,$7.85 2015,$7.85 2016,$7.85 2017,$7.85 2018,$7.85 2019,$7.85 2020,$7.85 2021,$8.39 2022,$8.97 2023,$9.59 2024,$10.26
So, by percentage that's:
undefined
2021,6.9% 2022,6.9% 2023,6.9% 2024,7.0%
I'm not sure those raises are justified, but we did just go through a period of high inflation, and even a business like Verisign has employees and other expenses that got more expensive. I'll be interested to see where this story goes.
Verisign is a government granted monopoly who's primary job is to maintain a database of who owns what domains. That job is largely automated. The actual end user sales are delegated to dealers; Verisign doesn't even do much of that. I'd be surprised if they had 500 employees.
All they really need to do is run a database server. Not even a big one, like Google copying the entire public internet.
They get fees from every domain every year. The servers get cheaper and more efficient every year. I'd be stunned if there was any reasonable excuse for these price increases.
any reasonable excuse for these price increases.
Profit.
Skimming through their financial reports it seems they needed to the money to finance share a buyback program. So they are helping the rich people money economy.
Not a reasonable excuse.
Derp, I forgot to add that in before posting.
It was going to be a big long gripe about profit seeking bullshit... but then I'd just be preaching to the choir ;-)
What did they cost in the early 00’s? I vaguely remember it being a lot compared to these prices.
IIRC, when Verisign had a registrar monopoly, they were charging $35/yr with 2 years up front.
That's more than a 30% increase!
I want my own tld
They won’t do what I really want: .d
Also, domain names used to be free.
