new gtlds GoDaddy to drop support for all Uniregistry strings (permanently)

The GoDaddy drama continues. It's solely a strategic decision by GoDaddy and has nothing to do with "customer confusion" as they claim. Uniregistry is clearly eating up market share as a domain registrar.

GoDaddy immediately raised prices in all grandfathered gTLDs. Why?

If they truly cared about their customers, they'll let them know that a) registrations in grandfathered gTLDs would remain at a fixed price and b) they wouldn't raise the prices in May, as opposed to September.

GoDaddy did not want to implement price tiers, for "before the increase" customers that'd be grandfathered. Whether it was an inability to work on such code changes, or an unwillingness to cater to a Registry that's also a competing registrar, the bottom line is they had 6 months to do so. They chose to sever ties with Uniregistry.

That's fine. At least the truth needs to come out.

Acroplex said:

The GoDaddy drama continues. It's solely a strategic decision by GoDaddy and has nothing to do with "customer confusion" as they claim. Uniregistry is clearly eating up market share as a domain registrar.

GoDaddy immediately raised prices in all grandfathered gTLDs. Why?

If they truly cared about their customers, they'll let them know that a) registrations in grandfathered gTLDs would remain at a fixed price and b) they wouldn't raise the prices in May, as opposed to September.

GoDaddy did not want to implement price tiers, for "before the increase" customers that'd be grandfathered. Whether it was an inability to work on such code changes, or an unwillingness to cater to a Registry that's also a competing registrar, the bottom line is they had 6 months to do so. They chose to sever ties with Uniregistry.

That's fine. At least the truth needs to come out.

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I was wondering it it was a strategic move too.

Is there an anonymous bible for the domainer dropping the dime on the Go Daddy untold story? I wish some of the big cheeses on this and other sites would stop polishing their apples and speak straight.
What influence should grandaddy go daddy have on the market?
And have they spawned better service companies for vectors of the domainer service market for their high crimes and misdemeanors?

Those coding changes are not simple Theo.

NameCheap is stopping support too.

https://www.namepros.com/threads/na...niregistry-and-xyz-domain-extensions.1036032/

Do you write code?

"Those coding changes are not simple."

So it's not for the benefit of the customer then, is it? Incompetence to perform code changes, or unwillingness to work with the Registry and their API?

ICANN requires 6 months of a heads-up to the Registrars, when a Registry implements price changes. If GoDaddy and their gargantuan budget cannot implement changes fast enough, then there is a huge problem.

But customer concern isn't the real issue here.

Acroplex said:

The GoDaddy drama continues. It's solely a strategic decision by GoDaddy and has nothing to do with "customer confusion" as they claim. Uniregistry is clearly eating up market share as a domain registrar.

GoDaddy immediately raised prices in all grandfathered gTLDs. Why?

If they truly cared about their customers, they'll let them know that a) registrations in grandfathered gTLDs would remain at a fixed price and b) they wouldn't raise the prices in May, as opposed to September.

GoDaddy did not want to implement price tiers, for "before the increase" customers that'd be grandfathered. Whether it was an inability to work on such code changes, or an unwillingness to cater to a Registry that's also a competing registrar, the bottom line is they had 6 months to do so. They chose to sever ties with Uniregistry.

That's fine. At least the truth needs to come out.

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Don't you think you should also include a disclaimer with your comment, to let people know that Uniregistry pays you as a sponsor and that's why you're continously bashing GoDaddy and defending Uniregistry?

Arca said:

Don't you think you should also include a disclaimer with your comment, to let people know that Uniregistry pays you as a sponsor and that's why you're continously bashing GoDaddy and defending Uniregistry?

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Uniregistry pays for advertising space on my blog - nothing else. I use their registrar services, as I use GoDaddy and other registrars.

Disclaimers exist in the articles that I linked to.

Save the kookery for the real culprit in this case, GoDaddy.

Acroplex said:

customer concern isn't the real issue here.

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For GoDaddy it is a real issue, hence their punitive actions against puniregistry.

Acroplex said:

Save the kookery for the real culprit in this case, GoDaddy.

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GoDaddy is the culprit for not catering to the whims of the Uniregistry registry? Isn't Uniregistry to blame for their insane price increases and confusing (and apparently technically difficult to implement) grandfathering of certain extensions?

So GoDaddy is the culprit for not pandering to Uniregistry's shenanigans? Ok.

Maybe you don't understand what is the issue at hand.

Uniregistry increases prices - bad, silly, stupid - call it whatever you want.

New pricing model involves grandfathering of the existing domains in the most price-hiked gTLDs, which creates two tiers of pricing: those registered before, and after Sept. 8th.

ICANN says: you must tell Registrars 6 months in advance and provide support to implement the price changes.

Instead, GoDaddy drops the gTLDs. So who is full of shenanigans?

Here's what GoDaddy did: Jacked the prices unilaterally. Did not inform its customers that they could have registered domains in every single grandfathered gTLD before September 8. Instead, dropped all support - which it re-instated.

Now, at T-3 weeks, they announce they drop support again. To me that means one thing: they can't implement the price tiers, or are unwilling to do so.

We went through the same discussion the first time around. Nothing new here.

Tucows will not hassle with the code changes too.

https://onlinedomain.com/2017/05/26...tucows-stops-support-9-uniregistry-new-gtlds/

Registrars pay software staff to do more important things. Todd Han, founder and CEO of Dynadot, has even said so.

@Joe Styler?

Acroplex said:

Instead, GoDaddy drops the gTLDs. So who is full of shenanigans?

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So this is good news for Uniregistry as they won't have to deal with GoDaddy's unwarranted shenanigans anymore.

I think that the good news is finally understanding what is the issue, and it's unrelated to "customer confusion."

Acroplex said:

I think that the good news is finally understanding what is the issue, and it's unrelated to "customer confusion."

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Yes, it's all clear now. This has nothing to do with the customer confusion created by Uniregistry's pricing variables, and all the registrars dropping them are merely conspiring to bring down a competitor.

If you want to ignore exactly what GoDaddy did, then that's your choice.

There is no confusion: September 8th is 6 months past the day that Uniregistry told Registrars pricing changes. For the 7 highest priced gTLDs, grandfathering was implemented. The remaining gTLDs got minimal increases, and some were not increased at all.

Clear so far?

Had GoDaddy done the right thing from May onward (when they reinstated the Uniregistry gTLDs) they would have not jacked the prices immediately. They would have told their customers - the ones they are concerned about "confusing - that they could STILL get the previous/current pricing up until September 8th, and thus get grandfathered.

But they didn't. To me, that's dropping the ball. And they did.

Uniregistry served the ball up for GoDaddy to drop when they introduced these price changes. They could have halted the price increases subsequent to the outrage of registrar partners in order to reverse the ongoing fallout. Registrars are not obligated to pander to the decision Uniregistry made. Uni went ahead with this, knowing how registrars were strongly against it, and they are ultimately responsible for getting themselves into this predicament.

While you want to attack the registrars that do not agree with Uni's entitlement to changing their prices in this unprecedented and confusing manner, you might find that it is more constructive to look at the internal problems with the registry's business direction that lead them to this point where they're getting dropped left and right (that would include looking more critically at your paying sponsor too, not only attacking the companies that are not willing/able to facilitate their pricing whims).

As I said, I am not thrilled about the price increases, it is what it is.

However, the grandfathering of prices is real, and GoDaddy preferred to drop the ball instead of working things out. They don't do much else for Uniregistry, they take a piece of the pie for every sale. There is no inventory to reprice.

The issue is that the claims GoDaddy came up with regarding "customer confusion" are not valid.

And Registrars are obligated to implement changes within reason, and with 6 months of a heads-up they most certainly didn't seem too enthusiastic about it.

Maybe instead of seeing conspiracies behind everything in the domain industry, you'd accept the fact your favorite Registrar is full of it on this subject.

Those that like to attack Uniregistry on this subject have other issues. If you want the facts, read my extensive coverage on the GoDaddy saga, which I can assure you, overlooks any and all sponsorships.

They created their own Doom, Some money is better than no money, Greed got em

The original intention wasn't to grandfather names it was to raise all prices because Uniregistry said the strings were not viable.

Schilling said. “If you have a space with only 5,000 registrations, you need to have a higher price point to justify its existence, just because running a TLD isn’t free,”

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If not enough people are buying names at the existing prices it seems unlikely that enough people will buy after September when the prices rise by up to 3000%!

The TLDs seeing the biggest price hikes are .hosting and .juegos (Spanish for “games”) which are going up from about $20 retail and about $10 retail respectively to about $300 apiece.

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http://domainincite.com/21603-schilling-big-price-increases-needed-to-keep-new-gtlds-alive

Grandfathering the existing names after the outcry means the price rises will have little benefit for the registry therefore if a gTLD was unviable before it is difficult to see how it will become viable.

The March prices have nothing to do with the final prices, or the fact that grandfathering was introduced. I agree, that not everything was planned as it should.

Grandfathering the gTLDs makes absolute sense, as existing customers are directly affected. I would be on the side of GoDaddy, if there was no such grandfathering of prices.

But have no doubt that the GoDaddy decision to pull Uniregistry strings down - and lose access to the premium inventory of 2 million domains that comes in September - was purely strategic, towards a competitor Registrar. I demonstrated this by documenting the GoDaddy pricing since May.

All this tells me one thing: the strings are not profitable enough for Godaddy to bother with the changes, and not worth keeping in their offering. Simple business decision.

I agree, if it is not working simply let it go and move on.

Acroplex said:

and lose access to the premium inventory of 2 million domains that comes in September

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No one is waiting for those so-called "premium" domain names. I'm sure GoDaddy is losing no sleep over missing the opportunity to sell domains that few, if any, desire.

Yup!

Arca said:

Uniregistry served the ball up for GoDaddy to drop when they introduced these price changes.

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GD knows what premium domains sell, .com. They own a bunch.

GeorgeK said:

No one is waiting for those so-called "premium" domain names. I'm sure GoDaddy is losing no sleep over missing the opportunity to sell domains that few, if any, desire.

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Kate said:

All this tells me one thing: the strings are not profitable enough for Godaddy to bother with the changes, and not worth keeping in their offering. Simple business decision.

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Bothering isn't the right word here. Embargoing is more accurate. GoDaddy is a store-front of gTLDs, and they play whichever game they choose to play. Definitely a business decision that only Frank can elaborate on; there is a recording on DNW coming up on Monday, let's see how much of the GoDaddy games he will divulge.