Re: [wg-c] Eureka?

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

On Sat, Aug 07, 1999 at 10:43:24PM -0700, Christopher Ambler wrote:
[...]
> I submit that computer.web is just as valuable as computer.com
> if they are the only two. There have been a number of
> expensive .net domains that support this statement. If
> com/net/web are the only three, then we still have scarcity,
> and we have value. Indeed, if the "IAHC 7" were to have
> been added, CORE would have found themselves with
> a very lucrative scarce resource. The registrars would have
> made a killing off of the new and novel TLDs. Be careful
> here - if you don't agree that they would have made a killing,
> please explain why.

They might have made a killing, but I don't think so.  There were
around 70 or 80 registrars; anyone else (including IODesign) could
pay the entrance fee and become a registrar (if you thought they were
going to make a killing, you would certainly sign up to be a CORE
registrar), and soon there would have been 700 registrars.  Say each
new TLD sold 5 million registrations in a year; that's $35M if
current prices hold.  $35,000,000/700 = $50,000.  The registry was
constrained to be a cost-recovery basis, so no one would be getting
rich running the registry. 

You might say that 700 registrars is way too many -- maybe.  But I
assumed that every one of the new TLDs matched .com in a single year,
which is also rather unlikely; and that current prices held (also
unlikely). 

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Do good, and you'll be
kent@songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain