Top domain news: Government grants windfall to Verisign

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A nice gift for Verisign

The U.S. Government Department of Commerce extended its Cooperative Agreement with Verisign today and granted Verisign what it really wants: the ability to increase the wholesale price it charges for .com domain names.

The agreement lifts the price freeze and lets Verisign negotiate with ICANN to increase prices by up to 7% per year for the last four years of each six-year extension. That's a 31% hike per six years.

Of course, ICANN can always say no. But it was ICANN that rubber-stamped similar price hikes before the U.S. government stepped in. And ICANN is facing some financial difficulties, so it is likely to accept .com price hikes in return for a bigger piece of the pie.

So that's the big news to kick of November. Now let's review last month.

Here are the top stories on DNW last month, as ranked by pageviews:

1. The Problem with WordPress - WordPress is too complicated for the typical small business owner, providing an opening for competitors.

2. "Stop the Price Increase of .COM" petition gains steam - It didn't work, though.

3. Verisign sells security business to Neustar for up to $120 million - Verisign (NASDAQ:VRSN) will become a pureplay registry after transitioning its security services business to Neustar.

4. Uniregistry is rolling out a paid discount plan - Uniregistry calls them Perks, but many existing customers are unhappy.

5. Domain Capital goes after Prince's estate for reverse domain name hijacking - The move comes after the estate claimed ownership of Prince.com is cybersquatting.

And here are the DNW podcasts from October

#208 - Country Code domains (listen)
#207 - Talking pork buns with Ray King (listen)
#206 - Sedo CEO Tobias Flaitz (listen)
#205 - Teaching the World About Domains (listen)
#204 - Domain sales in 2018 with Jeff Gabriel (listen)