Fees for using two of the most common suffixes for Internet addresses are going up for a second consecutive year.VeriSign Inc., the company that keeps the master list of domain names ending in ".com" and ".net," said that effective Oct. 1, the annual fee for ".com" names will go up 7 percent to $6.86 and the ".net" fee will increase 10 percent to $4.23.
.com and .net Fees Set To Rise In October [sfgate.com]
The price hike, disclosed in a letter to the Internet's key oversight agency, does not require any regulatory approval.
hmmm. How much of an increase *does* require approval?
Hope this will help to get rid of the domain parking syndrome some companies aim for.
not a chance at 7% - certainly with a weak dollar for us UK guys domains have never been cheaper. It costs us more to buy a pint than a domain name.
On one hand, domains are dirt cheap right now.
On the other hand, they should be free.
Yes and no. If they were free, all of them would be taken, even asdlweuriolroqwpqlf.com
Right, but a one time bump in their earning now, is going to be less overall then if we keep renewing annually paying the 7% increase each year.
True, but if stockholders see a prominent increase in revenue, then the stock goes up, and they've certainly been pretty all over the place for the first quarter this year
Plus any money they make now goes into a bank account which earns interest, it may almost make up for people buying year to year at the increased rate.
>>On the other hand, they should be free.
Like directwheels says, if they were free, all of them would be taken. It'd totally ruin the idea behind domains and reduce the 'remaining' ones to complete garbage.
Hey! That's mine! :-)
Sorry, I have been watching this for a while and I have to press the BS buzzer ;-)
The fact that in 1893 the US government decided to kick out the resettled native Americans and declared that the 42,000 parcels available in Oklahoma were free to the first comers does not mean that you can't buy property in Oklahoma today. It just means that it is no longer free (except for the administrative costs of filing your claim, which was not a cost of the land).
No matter what the price is, eventually all domains worth having at a given price will be gone and all the domains that you think of as "available" (by which you really mean unregistered) will be registered. Most, however, will still be "available". It will be a simple matter of offering more money to the owner than the domain is worth to that person.
You just have a skewed perception of the domain market because you happen to be alive during the "domain rush" period. Some people (hello Jeff?) figured that out years ago. You can think of what they did as hiring ten thousand people to rush into Oklahoma and stake claims, knowing that someday this property would not be free for the price of a claims filing.
will definitly renew the domains now for 10 years before they go up 7%.
right now they are only going up 7% but after the governments finish taxing alcohol and tobacco, i am sure they will find a reasoen that domains is unhealthy and start taxing domains LOLLLLLL
