Elizabeth Warren calls for crackdown on Internet “monopoly” you’ve never heard of

2 years ago by jeffw to c/news

Senator wants to investigate whether VeriSign is ripping off customers and violating antitrust laws.
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solrize 159 points 2 years ago

Tldr: Verisign, the registrar of the .com tld. They have been jacking up domain prices.

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whithom 81 points 2 years ago

Year,Wholesale Price (USD)

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
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n2burns 23 points 2 years ago

So, by percentage that's:

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.

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Steve 62 points 2 years ago

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.

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slartibartfast 12 points 2 years ago

What did they cost in the early 00’s? I vaguely remember it being a lot compared to these prices.

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treadful 16 points 2 years ago

IIRC, when Verisign had a registrar monopoly, they were charging $35/yr with 2 years up front.

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catloaf 10 points 2 years ago

That's more than a 30% increase!

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whithom 5 points 2 years ago

I want my own tld

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AnUnusualRelic 7 points 2 years ago

Also, domain names used to be free.

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jagged_circle 1 point 2 years ago
path: 0 13619389 13619717 13625861, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
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