.Net pricing timebomb?
Thursday, July 7th, 2005
There was a huge uproar when ICANN announced that Verisign would retain control of the .net registry a couple months ago. But there was good news–the new registry charge for .net domains would drop from $6.00 to $4.25. Some of this savings would likely be passed on to registrants. I personally applauded this price change. But I didn’t read the details of Verisigns agreement as closely as Kevin Murphy at Computer Business Review. He points out that the $4.25 price is only in effect until January 1, 2007, at which point Verisign will get complete pricing flexibility.
In theory, Verisign could then raise the price to $10 or $20 or more. What is more likely is a change to $7.75 for a couple years to make up for the previous “discount” of $1.75. This will definitely be passed on to consumers. Will Verisign take advantage of their pricing control? Let’s not forget that we’re talking about the same company that introducted SiteFinder, a “service” that turned every unregistered .com domain into an advertisement for its products.
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