There are a few days left before its public consultation ends.
If you’re the sort who buys domains for fun, or to inspire you to start a future project, your hobby’s about to get a little pricier. ICANN is just days away from ending a consultation into the future of the .com top-level domain that’ll put an end to Obama-era price freezes. If successful, it’ll see the cost of a .com address rise by two bucks by the end of 2026, and potentially more thereafter.
ICANN is a not-for-profit body, headquartered in LA, that co-ordinates the Domain Name System (DNS) to ensure unique web addresses exist. It outsources the actual buying-and-selling of those domains to third parties, and has oversight by the departments of Commerce and Justice. Now, however, it’s looking in to tweaking some of its rules to, potentially, benefit one of its partner companies above others.