[At-Large] DomainIncite : Is this why WhatsApp hates some TLDs but not others?

[Karl Auerbach]

On 9/16/23 1:53 PM, Vanda Scartezini via At-Large wrote:
>
>
> The amount of profit any company makes if in a competitive environment 
> is not the business of any users, no matter the field the companies 
> are working.
>
ICANN has established an industry and mandated business models that are 
extremely non-competitive.

Once in, a domain name user is effectively locked in and subject to any 
predatory increases in registry fees that a registry might want to 
impose.  We see this quite clearly in the older TLDs such as .com, .org 
where there is utterly no relationship between costs and pricing other 
than adherence to principle of  "bleed 'em dry".

ICANN protects that model by effectively guaranteeing perpetual 
ownership of a TLD no matter how predatory a registry becomes.

This thread began by noting that many TLDs are treated as pariah 
spaces.  That means that the idea that a domain name owner might pull up 
stakes and move to a new TLD is a fantasy.  Other factors, such as web 
SEO ranking and strength of user recognition also strongly militate 
against the notion of inter-TLD migration.

By my estimate in .com alone ICANN is guaranteeing Verisign over a 
$billion/year in pure profit from .com alone.  Yet ICANN has never, 
ever, not once, ever asked the question "how much does it cost to 
provide a domain name for a year?"

ICANN is a regulatory body - there is no denying that - and it has sold 
its soul, and our wallets, to the bank accounts of companies such as 
Verisign.

That's not competition, that's robber barony.

         --karl--
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/at-large/attachments/20230916/33893187/attachment.html>