2y ago

Who profits from domain names fees

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?

34 comments

Three groups:
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the non-profit in charge of domain names.
Domain sponsors, the organization that agrees to provide the infrastructure for a particular top level domain. For example, .com is sponsored by Verisign.
The registrar you deal with has a license from the sponsor to sell registrations for a top level domain.
You pay the registrar, the registrar pays the sponsor, and the sponsor pays ICANN.
- Don't forget countries. A few, I don't have a list, but including .ai, .pn, are in full control of their domains and do it all on their own infra.
  
  Country-code TLDs are sponsored by the nation-state, but they still fall under the aegis of ICANN.
  
  Yes. Apparently the YouTuber/Web Dev Theo from theo.gg very recently had his domain just...disappear? Due to the country delisting him or something along those lines...he was obviously, and understandably upset in a recent video he released on this subject.
  EDIT: Looks like he got it resolved.
- But why is it so expensive? Like 20$ for a .org Domain. Fuck that.
  
  Cloudflare does no markup pricing, an .org with them is about $10 a year. https://www.cloudflare.com/products/registrar/
  
  $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
  
  OpenNIC is free, but pretty much almost no one use them. But I think lemmings would love them because of their open and democratic nature.
  
  before it opened for companies to be allowed to do registrations I paid $70 for my first .org domain. Back then you were also required to do 2 years up front then you could lay $35 a year after that. This was back in the late 90's, so $70 was a lot more back then.
  $20 is nothing now.
- Super informative, thanks!
- Thanks !
  I asked for who rips me off, is it the domain sponsors (TLD owners) ?
- Great answer
Chiefly the domain name registrar.
- So if it is the guys who owns the TLDs who rip everyone off, if a company bought a TLD and started to rent it at production price, it would finally enable domain names at like one cent or one dollar? (most websites have like 10 requests and they have a single IP, I don't get why one cent would be impossible)
Can I expand this question to who gets profits when you buy land on the moon, or buy a star, as a gift? Is it completely bullshit or what?
- Those are just 1980s NFTs. You don't own anything other than the certificate
- I saw a short do on the moon land selling once. They're not actually selling moon land. IIRC international agreement is nobody can own any.
  They sell certificates. And they have to disclose that in the fine print or sth. Still, people buy it for fun/novelty, or for the off-chance it'll mean something.
  So the person who took a map of the moon and sells certificates on his distribution of their own map splitting gets all of that money.
- 99.99% sure it’s all bullshit. Same with buying land in Scotland. You will actually own something there, though it is minuscule in size and no one will actually call you a lord or lady for it. In contrast, no one has ownership rights to stars or celestial bodies, including the moon, so that’s all bogus for sure.
- That's completely bullshit. There are, however, a ton of costs associated with domain names.
- Is it completely bullshit or what?
  Ding ding ding!
- If you don't want to pay, there are other alternative domain name system, like OpenNIC. The problem is, most operating system don't recognize them so you'll have to go out of your way to install them into your machine, which significantly limit their adoption.

34 comments