I have been working for Google Registry for 8.5 years now, and am the TL/M of the team. But I was not relying on memory here (how would I remember the particulars of one single domain name out of millions, especially on the first occasion it is ever coming to my attention?). I simply don't understand the OP's claims given that I have confirmed in our system that the domain name 'forum.dev' is and always been premium and was billed as premium at the time of initial registration.

8.5 years is not a decade. Precision matters, especially when talking about money and time.

Did you verify the actual payment processed by the merchant processor, or just the category it fell in and the price of that category when the domain was actually registered?

Bad code happens, the Google Cloud Print DDoS fiasco is but one example.

What are you talking about?

Why is a decade needed? The forum.dev domain name in question was registered a year ago on 2021-12-06...

> We have never increased the price of a single domain name after registration in our entire decade of existence.

Google Registry/Domains only launched 8.5 years ago.

There's a little bit more to it than that! We did indeed launch our first TLD, .みんな, in early 2014, around 8½ years ago, but the team itself has existed for around a decade. There was plenty of work to do prior to launching our first TLD, namely, writing the software to run our TLDs (Nomulus, available at https://nomulus.foo ), and of course, all the admin work required to apply for and delegate the TLDs in the first place. ICANN's first round of new gTLD expansion occurred in 2012, and the second round ... hasn't happened yet :(

> There was plenty of work to do prior to launching our first TLD

Of course, but it’s pretty hard to jack up prices before the product was launched, which gp was weirdly adamant about.

Indeed that would be impossible ;)

But the registry / team could have existed before the launch, building the product.