Comments on: Ex-ICANN Board Member: VeriSign’s cost per domain is $0.14

By: Nikolay Kolev

Nikolay Kolev — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 01:28:32 +0000

I agree that capitalism and monopoly are mutually exclusive. VeriSign is not a responsible corporation, it’s an evil corporation and we should all boycott it! It’s unbelievable that registrars like GoDaddy and others are making peanuts compared to VeriSign, which is doing almost nothing.

Unfortunately, ICANN is almost as bad. It’s a mafia and is not serving the public interest.

By: Ahmed

Ahmed — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 23:46:45 +0000

Hrmm – considering I own a variety of businesses, I’m hardly one to decry capitalism.

VeriSign isn’t capitalism. Its a monopoly – its been given to them, without any competing bids. They’ve now arbitrarily decided to increase prices, making them a nice $25 million extra in profit.

A monopoly != capitalism – in fact it is the very antithesis of capitalism.

Alas, hiding behind anonymity is rather easy

By: Jason

Jason — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 23:44:54 +0000

Get over it, we live in a capitalist society, the company has the right to raise the price if they want to.

By: Ahmed

Ahmed — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 20:28:29 +0000

And I’ve already explained this multiple times:

1. This isn’t about domainers. Complain about the domainers all you want, but this is a monopoly abusing its position to make more money (to the tune of $25 million pure profit).

2. $0.14 or $6.00 or $6.42 – 99% of domains owned by domainers won’t be affected by this price increase.

By: technology news

technology news — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 20:12:46 +0000

i think 0.14 not a suitable for domainers …

By: Ahmed

Ahmed — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 15:18:22 +0000

@Steve – doh you are right – fixed.

@m3mn0n – its best not to talk about stuff you don’t know about. GoDaddy pays VeriSign $6 for every domain they have – and will pay $6.42 in the future

@Amhed – sales? What kind of sales personnel does VeriSign need for the registry? The $0.14 is the overall operating cost per domain. With 65 million domains, they scale up quite fast.

By: Amhed Herrera

Amhed Herrera — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 14:37:26 +0000

Guys, this is only the exploitation margin (I talk spanish, not sure that’s the actual name).

This doesn’t take into consideration operating costs, electricity, sales reps, services reps, etc.

If GoDaddy raises the new domain names 20 cents, who the hell is going to care? it’s just 20 cents which you pay once a year. Give me a break.

By: DJ

DJ — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 13:23:25 +0000

m3mm0n,

You need to dig into the subject matter a bit more.

Verisign is the sole .com registry, GoDaddy is nothing but a registrar…

By: m3mn0n

m3mn0n — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 13:09:22 +0000

monopoly? WTF you smokin’

This isn’t 1999… ever heard of GoDaddy?

By: Steve

Steve — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 12:59:04 +0000

Your math is wrong. You calculated a markup, not margin. Margin is Profit / Revenue, so their margin is actually 98%. It is impossible to have a margin > 100%.

Not that this makes the news any more palatable.