How many domain names do you own? How much to start a domain company?

job0121

Just wondering how many domains are you paying for? The cost of say a .com domain seems to be less than $1 per year, the expensive part seems to be the fixed monthly fee to ICANN... So the idea is to pool a lot of domain owners together and start own company directly with ICANN... Possible?

muffin

.com is $7.85 + ICANN fee, not less than $1at all.

HBAndrei

@job0121 said:
The cost of say a .com domain seems to be less than $1 per year, the expensive part seems to be the fixed monthly fee to ICANN

Where did you get this info from?

job0121

@muffin said:
.com is $7.85 + ICANN fee, not less than $1at all.

That's right... The $7.85 seems to be coming from a private company called Verisign... Any possibility to replace Verisign and go crowd funding and go directly to ICANN? Is it through bidding?

@hbAndrei I am actually not sure on this, just checking possibilities... I could be wrong...

muffin

@job0121 said:

@muffin said:
.com is $7.85 + ICANN fee, not less than $1at all.

That's right... The $7.85 seems to be coming from a private company called Verisign... Any possibility to replace Verisign and go crowd funding and go directly to ICANN? Is it through bidding?

@hbAndrei I am actually not sure on this, just checking possibilities... I could be wrong...

What?

job0121

@muffin said:

@job0121 said:

@muffin said:
.com is $7.85 + ICANN fee, not less than $1at all.

That's right... The $7.85 seems to be coming from a private company called Verisign... Any possibility to replace Verisign and go crowd funding and go directly to ICANN? Is it through bidding?

@hbAndrei I am actually not sure on this, just checking possibilities... I could be wrong...

What?

According to this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/.com

Verisign is the current .com registry that charges money on top of ICANN fees for com domain before additional mark up by registrars such as name heap, godaddy, etc....

I'm wondering how long is their contract, is it until the end of time?

deank

This won't end well.

mrclown

SteveMC

Verisign keeps its dot-com cash cow until 2024
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/01/verisign_retains_dotcom_cash_cow_until_2024/

Dot-com web addresses prices to swell, thanks to sweetheart deal between Uncle Sam, Verisign
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/02/dotcom_domains_pricing/

So get ready for a big change in 2025, with a new ... hum... never mind ... I go back to sleep...

niceboy

The Internet Commerce Association (ICA) wrote to the US government in 2012 arguing that the realities of the domain name market are such that Verisign could – and should – actually reduce the cost of dot-com domains by $2 rather than raise them by $2.

Verisign runs a monopoly with little real competition and such a move would be in the public interest given how widespread dot-com domain usage is, argued ICA's legal counsel Phil Corwin, the main driver behind the campaign.

In November last year Corwin left his post at ICA after 11 years to become policy counsel for… Verisign. ®

raindog308

job0121 said: Any possibility to replace Verisign and go crowd funding and go directly to ICANN? Is it through bidding?

It's not like Verisign just sits back and collects the fee for doing nothing. They run a big infrastructure to manage domains, resolve legal disputes, etc. They have 1,000 employees and spend ~500m a year on operations. I'm skeptical you're going to replace that with a Kickstarter.

timelapse

Afaik registrars bid to control a tld from Icann... That involves cash. Icann also require registrars to have minimum cash on hand or capital.

Come to think of it, never seen a registrar that is community-powered, community-driven or sponsored. Maybe the EFF can sponsor? This may be plausible for the .free tld so that it will be free for everyone. But I wonder how will that work out since free = abuse.

timelapse

@raindog308 said:

job0121 said: Any possibility to replace Verisign and go crowd funding and go directly to ICANN? Is it through bidding?

It's not like Verisign just sits back and collects the fee for doing nothing. They run a big infrastructure to manage domains, resolve legal disputes, etc. They have 1,000 employees and spend ~500m a year on operations. I'm skeptical you're going to replace that with a Kickstarter.

Wasnt Freenom a startup backed by VCs so they could offer the various free domains?

haganhost

@timelapse said:

@raindog308 said:

job0121 said: Any possibility to replace Verisign and go crowd funding and go directly to ICANN? Is it through bidding?

It's not like Verisign just sits back and collects the fee for doing nothing. They run a big infrastructure to manage domains, resolve legal disputes, etc. They have 1,000 employees and spend ~500m a year on operations. I'm skeptical you're going to replace that with a Kickstarter.

Wasnt Freenom a startup backed by VCs so they could offer the various free domains?

Don't think so, freenom did get VC funding to expand it's operations to include things like free hosting and what not, though few years later nothing has changed really... they did start there own dns resolvers...

BlaZe

You can start .cum TLD by sponsoring it.

SteveMC

I can't find it, but, I loosely remember that, when there was the call for new gTLD (you know all the fancy extensions, with abusive price or renewal, that barely no one is using), there was a one time non-refundable fee of $200.000 or something like that, for the application. Then your proposal was reviewed, and you had to demonstrate you had the skill, resources and finance, to handle it.

Once approved, a registry also has a yearly fixed fee to pay to the ICANN, it might also be $200.000 ? ... But I think the ICANN has or will reduce it to $25.000 or something like that.

Now, I think that a "community-powered" registry, might sounds good , but, for sure it will be abused,... and over abused, ... you know...