If ICANN only charges $0.18 per domain name, why am I paying $10?

Re:If ICANN only charges $0.18 per domain name, why am I pay... by pbhjpbhj on Wednesday May 07, 2014 @09:17AM (#7709941)

$8.50 still seems quite high given you're paying them to let you use their interface to increment the expiry date on the domain. With the volume they have and once the system is set-up there's got to be almost no action to take beyond the maintenance of a few servers?

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Re:If ICANN only charges $0.18 per domain name, why am I pay... by cpach on Thursday May 08, 2014 @06:05AM (#7714583)

A registry is not just a MySQL database with some random domain names in it.

Have you considered what kind of resources and expertise that are required to handle issues such as domain name disputes? For example, suppose Alice and Bob run an informal business together, they have a clash and both of them make claims of the business' domain name. Or if Mallory registers someone elses company name and use it for nefarious purposes? [+]

[+] See http://swartz.typepad.com/texplorer/2006/04/wellknown_rock_.... for a particularly domain name anecdote involving Metallica and a Swedish VC firm.

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Re:If ICANN only charges $0.18 per domain name, why am I pay... by _delirium on Wednesday May 07, 2014 @09:24AM (#7709979)

Yeah, I'm not too sure what the expenses and finances are like. They mention that they manage ~1m domains, so that's ~$8-9m/yr revenue. Maybe a bit less if a substantial percentage of domains are doing 3-year or 5-year renewals (which are discounted 10-20%). Not a trivial amount, but it's not hard to spend a few million $ on salaries, office space, a server room, etc. It's possible the service is also sending a surplus to its owner, the nonprofit Danish Internet Forum, but I'm not sure if that's the case.

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