Re: [ga] Put down the caviar -- wholesale price of .cn drops to USD 13 cents/year

["Prophet Partners Inc." <Domains@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi George,

Higher reg fees mean higher ICANN fees and operating budget. How else would
you expect ICANN to pay for sending Vint in a helicopter to ICANN meetings
or ICANN sponsored soccer matches?

If I recall correctly, the wholesale price on .net is $4/year. There is
simply no legitimate reason for VeriSign to be raising prices on .com. A
competitive bid for the .com contract would certainly result in lower
prices.

Sincerely,
Ted
Prophet Partners Inc.
http://www.ProphetPartners.com
http://www.Premium-Domain-Names.com


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "George Kirikos" <gkirikos@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: <vint@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2007 1:40 PM
Subject: [ga] Put down the caviar -- wholesale price of .cn drops to USD 13
cents/year


> Hello,
>
> According to:
>
>
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/sp/article/2007/200703/20070308/article_308251.htm
>
> CNNIC is reducing the price of .cn domains to USD 13 cents/year.
>
> What again was ICANN's justification for allowing VeriSign to RAISE
> prices by 7% per year from the already too high base of $6/yr??
>
> One only has to look at the world of webhosting to see that technology
> costs have been falling. e.g. at Hostgator.com, one can get 200 GB of
> webspace and 2 TB of transfers for $14.95/month (visit
> http://www.hostgator.com/shared.shtml ). At MediaTemple, one can ontain
> 100 GigaBytes of webspace and 1 TeraBytes of bandwidth for $20/month
> (visit http://www.mediatemple.net/webhosting/gs/ ). At GoDaddy, one can
> get obtain 200 GigaBytes of disk space and 2 TeraBytes of transfers for
> $14.99/month (visit  https://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/hosting/shared.asp
> ). Prices for similar offerings would have been 100 or 1000 times more
> expensive just a few years ago.
>
> ICANN should be looking at a price index of technology costs like
> webhosting, not the price index comprised of Beluga caviar, Cristal
> champage, 5 star hotels, Jimmy Choo shoes and Gucci bags.
>
> In Warren Buffett's recent letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders,
>
> http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2006ltr.pdf
>
> Mr. Buffett noted (page 3) how GEICO increased the number of policies
> from 5.7 million to 8.1 million from 2003 to 2006, but did that while
> the number of employees FELL 3.5%. Also, on page 19, he notes how their
> home office (a total of 19 employees at World Headquarters) totalled
> $3.5 million last year. I imagine most would agree those 19 employees
> are doing a lot more substantial work than anything coming out of
> ICANN, given Berkshire's market cap of $166 BILLION (see
> http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=BRK-A ).
>
> In comparison, ICANN's budget for 2006-07 is to have 89 employees, and
> a payroll of $12.5 million (see
> http://www.icann.org/announcements/proposed-budget-2006-07-cln.pdf )
> with total expenditures exceeding $30 million. In 2003-04, the budget
> was under $10 million (see
> http://www.icann.org/financials/financial-report-fye-30jun04.pdf ).
>
> ICANN could learn a lot about running a lean efficient operation by
> studying the example of Berkshire Hathaway or GEICO.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> George Kirikos
> http://www.kirikos.com/