Looks like the registry just decided to stop playing "nice" with domainers and reseller-investors. .CO registry knows the value and sales of .CO...(generally at a min). They already indirectly set the min market price for lll.co. I like that. They are assertive and they have asked domain buyers to put up or shut up. I just watched a show where some guy spent $10K and $16K on 2 different pair of sneakers. If someone can spend that amt of money on shoes, $12K for a domain doesnt sound outrageous. Higher asking prices often signify confidence of the sellers.
It's not as if one of the main reasons that their domain extension was a success from day one and that they made any money at all was because of domain investors or small enterprises who liked being able to get nice domains for cheap for their projects.
The registry setting a minimum price is just greed imho. They are just replacing domainers with themselves and in a free market that's not a good thing.
Most successful enterprises are platforms that allow others to profit a lot from a thing they provide. Take most Microsoft products eg Visual Studio, SQL, Office365, Windows... they allow others to pay a nominal fee for products, because they are the sole originator for these products, like the .CO registry. The nominal fee is Microsoft's profit and is paid by the hundreds of thousands of other companies which is broad and wide ranging. They are enabling enterprise and because of this a lot of people want their products because they use their software as the basis for their own businesses. When you're starting small, it's free or a nominal fee up to thousands as you profit from it.
The .CO registry was the same which is what has lead to it's popularity. A small fee that
might enable you to protect your brand or build an enterprise! No steep up front fees, the same service for everyone big or small. This model made them popular, it made their registry a success!! For the .CO registry to change their model like this moves the registry one step closer to being the sole beneficiary of the profits that come from owning, marketing and selling .CO domains, something that may be the foundation for many people's livelihoods. Those that were profiting from it may now not profit and those that were forced to buy up a tonne of .CO names to protect their brands may have to pay through the nose to do so, which also isn't a good thing.
I suppose the main problem here is that there are registries and they are free to act as they please. Is .CO not for profit? Well they should be, because in my eyes it's a public service that they're providing. But I suppose the world doesnt work like that... it seems that we need profit for a very small group of privileged individuals that were
bestowed arbitrarily with the responsibilty of running the .CO TLD instead of the successful model (like .COM) that has allowed everyone to profit, including the registry because of the tiny yearly fee and the broad usage of the TLD by everyone as a result.
Allowing people to profit from a service that you provide is a GOOD thing! It means your business is working and that you're providing a service that people need... but in this case it has to be weighed up with the fact that it's a public sevice. So if profit for the registry is the main driver for the change instead of getting more people access to the product, then that isn't a good thing either for a public registry.
Greedy greedy greedy.
