Yahoo! hikes domains to $34.95, sneaks notification into unrelated email

Buried in one of those eminently ignorable, machine-generated information e-mails from Yahoo! came the following:

If your billing information is up-to-date, there’s no need to do a thing (except keep enjoying your service). *Important note:* Beginning on July 1, 2008, Yahoo!’s annual domain renewal price increases to $34.95 per year.

I just love how it comes after a sentence contrived to encourage people to stop reading.

They last hiked the price in March:

Important note: Beginning on March 11, 2008, Yahoo!'s annual domain renewal price increases from $9.95 to $12.95 per year.

When a business turns a product into a recurring transaction scam, you know it's lost interest in the area. So Yahoo! is out of the domain game: small evidence of a big shift in the company's priorities?

Massive Yahoo! domain name price rise - is it to pay for the lawyers? [Red Ferett]

[#1 posted by uuid , June 27, 2008 4:52 AM]

Despite the fact that this title is only a catchy teaser, you should get your numbers right.

Yahoo increased their prices TO 350%.
If they did increase them BY 350%, the original price would have been around $7.

Thanks for not promoting innumeracy!

[#2 posted by Rob Beschizza , June 27, 2008 5:18 AM]

Writing "by 350 percent," with an assumption of reader intelligence, is preferable to "to 350 percent."

Edit: Though of course it would have been infinitely preferable if I'd actually considered the meaning of the word "by" instead of the mere fact it let me write a shorter headline.

[#3 posted by ROSSINDETROIT , June 27, 2008 5:51 AM]

Sorry to pick nits, Rob. To an intelligent reader, an increase of $25 on top of $10 is an additional 250%.
Thanks for pointing this out about Yahoo.

[#4 posted by Rob Beschizza , June 27, 2008 6:18 AM]

To explain, I didn't think that "by" necessarily implied an addition on top of the current price, though um, yeah, it actually does.

[#5 posted by CraziestGadgetsdotcom , June 27, 2008 9:03 AM]

i blame the high price of gas for this increase.

[#6 posted by Joel Johnson , June 27, 2008 9:11 AM]

Craziest Gadgets Dot Com has a point. I call for a return back to the early day of the internet when getting a fresh domain was as easy as popping down to your corner local host. And maybe it's just grown fonder in memory, but those domains seemed refreshier.

[#7 posted by inkhead , June 29, 2008 6:17 AM]

Yahoo, you giant &c&o&c&k suckers. I have over 350 domains I purchased through yahoo, simply because using them was at the time safe. They were are large company and didn't screw people over like network solutions.

I'm going to have to pay $13x350 now to transfer all of my domains to go daddy.

THIS SHOULD BE CONSIDERED theft

[#8 posted by Rob Beschizza , June 29, 2008 7:08 AM]

Inky, I'm transferring to goDaddy myself. It's got a special deal on for $7 a domain, with a cheat-sheet for Yahoo! users to make it easy.

[#9 posted by Rob Beschizza , June 29, 2008 7:08 AM]

Also, you don't have to obscure rude words, we don't care.

[#10 posted by arkizzle , June 29, 2008 10:10 AM]

I can't believe this fiasco.

InkHead, I feel for you. This is theft, or raketeering at least. You have been forced into a position without option to freely terminate. FUCKERS.

[#11 posted by Anonymous , July 11, 2008 1:12 AM]

many person will cry with the bill from Yahoo. They send email but the price in the domain account "still old price". If you do not read email and just visit your account. You will know nothing.
I transfer my domain names out of yahoo just for $6.95 (http://www.luckyregister.com/ it is Godaddy family)