On Wed, 12 Aug 2009 19:49:33 -0400 (EDT), "John R. Levine" <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:

...

Either the .com registry has now saved over 1.3 billion $US that we were

...

previously paying and which it is now retaining as profit.

Or the registry fee is pegged by ICANN at a hyper inflated level.

I don't believe that Verisign has ever offered a cost justification for their registry fees. Considering that .COM and .NET use the exact same infrastructure, it'd take some pretty creative cost accounting to justify

$6.86 for .COM and $4.98 for .NET.

Allow me to be the devil's advocate here. In a capitalist environment, market prices are based on supply and demand. As long as customers are willing to pay the price being asked, there is no reason why VRSN would lower its prices. That is what a VRSN shareholder expects the company to do. If there was ever a trend that .com registrations would decrease because of the price, VRSN would adapt its strategy. The bottom line is that if you are unhappy with the price you pay, vote with your feet and get a cheaper domain name. It's a free market. There is competition. Patrick -- Blog: http://patrick.vande-walle.eu Twitter: http://twitter.vande-walle.eu Identica: http://identica.vande-walle.eu