There are some people that asked a similar question but I don’t want who gets raw revenue, but who gets the probably obscene margins (profits thus) from paying $10-20/year for linking a piece of string and an IP address?
There are some people that asked a similar question but I don’t want who gets raw revenue, but who gets the probably obscene margins (profits thus) from paying $10-20/year for linking a piece of string and an IP address?
$20 is dirt cheap lol. They go up to the hundreds or even thousands. But those domains I do wonder why they cost so much, like a .xxx domain
Because someone is willing to pay for them. The internet isn’t a nonprofit project anymore like in the 90s when it was run by universities. For better and for worse.
It’s really not dirt cheap, it’s pure madness.
I pay ~$100 for the hosting of 100gb, where I can place 20 websites and use 25 email addresses (which have unlimited space I believe). I can also use licensed stuff like divi theme or install Nextcloud and some other apps. That hosting is secure, fast and reliable. Customer support responds within a week at most. All that requires real infrastructure and real work. Every single day.
So pray tell why should the registrar, sponsor and the ICANN get 10, 20 or more % of what I pay for all of that? For one single domain? Every single year. It honestly drives me crazy.
And don’t even get me started on those new TLDs, pure cancer. Not even talking about the obviously shady stuff, but also nice-sounding things like .art 🤮
The Internet is infrastructure. We deserve an at-cost, straightforward process to put our stuff there; no need for leeching gatekeepers and shady middlemen.
Free domains for everyone!
If domains don’t cost anything, what’s going to stop spammers from registering literally all of the domain names? Spam domains are already a huge problem, and I can only imagine that problem getting much worse if the gate is not kept.
Idk how to solve that problem but the current system is increasing it: https://www.spamhaus.org/statistics/tlds/
I assume you weren’t being literal about the free domains part, but I agree lol. No reason why one domain should cost $1000 when the other cost $20. It’s the exact same technical setup. Prices should vary if they’re already bought, but that’s about it. That’s why I like my .dev TLD because all of those are a flat $15/yr. Yet something cool for the hip techy youngsters would be like a .io domain, but those are $100+. Like why?