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.
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.
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,$10.26Also, domain names used to be free.
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.
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.
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 moneyeconomy.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.