[ericd]

I think the huge amount of domain camping implies that .com could stand to be a whole lot more expensive to hold and do nothing with. If you're using it for something important, $20/yr probably isn't going to break the bank. If anything, I think it should be much more.

[sleavey]

> $20/yr probably isn't going to break the bank

13 year old me would disagree. A .co.uk domain at the time was if I recall correctly about £5/year, equivalent to a week's wages from my paper round. A .com was around £12-15/year which I found too expensive. I learned a lot hacking around with DNS, subdomains, etc. and I wouldn't want to price today's kids out of doing the same. Saying that, back then there were only a few TLDs to choose from. I guess if there are still at least _some_ super cheap TLDs available then I probably wouldn't mind if .com in particular got more expensive given it seems to suffer the most from squatting.

[Kye]

I'm surprised no one has given Namezero's concept another try.

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/namezero

There's probably ways to monetize now that aren't trivially bypassed with a line of JavaScript. Think CloudFlare and their app injections. New Namezero could require you to use their ad-injecting/enforcing nameserver.

[ericd]

Yeah, as a kid these days, I'd just go with a different TLD.

[sfe22]

Even if i agree with you, why should a monopoly get the money? I am sure we can figure a better way to spend it.

[ericd]

You're right, they probably shouldn't, but that's a whole different discussion.

[xxpor]

How are they a monopoly? There's literally thousands of TLDs now. It's like saying Apple has a monopoly on iPhones.

[johnwheeler]

The other top level domains aren’t as credible, and everyone knows that.

[culpable_pickle]

credible? Ubiquitous, sure, but credible? Who ensures that a .com is a credible website?

[johnwheeler]

Whoever said anyone ensures a .com is credible? I don’t think anyone said a .com guarantees credibility. I said, other tlds aren’t as credible, and everyone knows that.

[PaywallBuster]

They have 140M .com domains.

Everyone holding a .com domain can't simply move its registration from Verisign to somewhere else.

(Moving to new gtld is not equivalent at all)

They're holding their customers captive and profiting from it.

[orra]

There's a cost to switching. Established links, domain reputation.

[xxpor]

Which should have been factored in as a risk from the beginning.

[orra]

Oh, please. Technology is deflationary. Significant, repeated, above inflation price rises aren't the fault of users: it's the US Government enabling monopoly corruption.

[paulryanrogers]

Few beyond .com would be recognized by non-technical people

[Kye]

They're a monopoly on .com. Reasonable or not, .com is still widely seen as more authoritative than other TLDs, even .net and .org.

[xxpor]

So why shouldn't Verisign be able to capture the value they're providing?

[Kye]

What value do you imagine Verisign provides? Verisign has nothing to do with .com's reputation. Most people have never heard of it. They didn't even run it until the peak of the .com bubble when everyone had already made their associations with .com.

[PaywallBuster]

Think about all the small websites.

At some point the extra cost is no longer worth it, and the content either vanishes or it's moved to facebook/google/medium platform.

We're leaving the open internet and further into the walled garden

[gen3]

It currently costs me 3x$8.18 a year to renew my personal domain, my parents, and a hobby site. It will cost me $409ea over the next 50 years. $1200 vs $3000 isn’t nothing to me.

[rootusrootus]

That seems like taking it to a logical absurdity. A developer making okay (non-SV) money right now with only cost-of-living adjustments for the next 50 years (assuming they'd work that long...) will make over 10 million dollars. $3000 is nothing on that scale.

[vecinu]

> next 50 years (assuming they'd work that long...)

I don't think this is reasonable, even if you started working at age 20 at a FAANG, you're not going to work until you're 70.

Keep in mind this industry is very ageist, you'd be lucky to even get 30 years of high salary income if you're not exceptionally good. That's assuming you don't burn out.

I'm surprised folks still use unrealistic examples such as these to move discussions in a certain direction.

[rootusrootus]

> Keep in mind this industry is very ageist, you'd be lucky to even get 30 years of high salary income

In the valley maybe, at a FAANG. In the regular world, esp F500 companies, there are lots of old folks. I work with several developers in their 60s. Could they get Google to hire them? Maybe not. They're still pulling down middle 100s.

> I'm surprised folks still use unrealistic examples such as these

You're referring, I hope, to the original comment that $3000 over 50 years was a deal breaker. I am not the one who thought that a 50 year time horizon made any sense at all for this discussion, I'm just playing along.

[vecinu]

I agree with you, outside of SV I did see older folks at tech companies.

> I am not the one who thought that a 50 year time horizon made any sense at all for this discussion, I'm just playing along.

That's my bad, I thought you initially brought up the 50 years of working at a FAANG-level company to not care of TLD fees.

[orra]

Despite the original intention of .com, not everybody using a .com domain is running a for profit business...

[culpable_pickle]

You can register upto 10 years in advance. I've done so with all of my domains. Lock in the current price for as long as possible.