DSTI/ICCP/TISP(2004)2/FINAL
Registrars, with their large databases of customers, have also entered other markets with aggressive
price cutting. Go Daddy and 1&1 Internet entered the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate market in
March 2004. Netcraft, a company that monitors the SSL market noted at the time that both registrars
appear poised to have an impact on pricing and market share. Netcraft stated, in April 2004, Both
companies are selling 128 bit certificates for USD 49.95. Go Daddy priced its certificates at USD 89.95
upon the March 8 launch of its SSL service, but has since dropped its price to USD 49.95 well below
comparable products from GeoTrust (USD 149 a year) and VeriSign (USD 199 to USD 349 a year and
up).
30
Companies such as Go Daddy are also making SSL certificate services available to their resellers of
domain name services. Accordingly, it can be concluded that ICANN reforms to the domain names
services market have assisted the growth of competition in adjacent markets.
Table 13. Some examples of additional services offered by the largest gTLDs registrars
Network Solutions
Domain Forwarding, Web Hosting, Web Page Creation, Private Registration
DomainsDirect
Domain Forwarding, Web Hosting, Web Creation, Bulk Registration
(Tucows)
Go Daddy Software
Domain Forwarding, Web Hosting, Web Page Creation, Private Registration, Bulk
Registration, Back Order Domains
Register.com
Web Hosting, Web Page Creation
eNom
Web Hosting, Private Registration
Melbourne IT
Domain Forwarding, Web Hosting, Web Page Creation
1&1 Internet
Domain Forwarding, Web Hosting, Web Page Creation, Personal e mail based on user's
domain
Source
: OECD.
Table 14. The price of additional services offered by major gTLDs registrars
(in USD)
Domain transfer
Private registration
Network Solutions
19.00
5.00 per annum
Tucows 14.99
Not
available
Go Daddy Software
7.95
9.00 per annum(1)
Register.com 39.99
Not
available
eNom
29.95
8.00 per annum
Melbourne IT
35.00(2)
Not available
Notes:
(1) This is a promotional price. The regular price is USD 12 per annum.
(2) Includes an additional one year of registration.
Source
: OECD.
Demand for new gTLDs
One of the issues raised in association with any discussion of new gTLDs is the likely demand for
additional names and whether the potential benefits will outweigh the potential costs. The pros and cons of
adding new domain names to the root are summarised below. Before looking at these it is worth reviewing
the experience to date with new gTLDs. By the end of 2003 there were just fewer than 2.3 million
registrations under
.info
,
.biz
and
.name
. This suggests there is some demand for new gTLDs. It has,
however, fallen well short of projections (
Box 1
). Moreover, where businesses engage in so called
28