[lbrindze]

> Gmail doesn't charge me $850/year for an email address, but somehow they managed to avoid people squatting thousands of addresses and selling them on the after-market at an exorbitant markup,

They don’t charge you for Gmail addresses, yes this is true, but there is definitely a thriving aftermarket for people squatting on desirable “OG” email addresses and user names, just as an example -> https://www.playerup.com/accounts/gmailogusername/

Clearly $850/yr is a price people are willing to pay, since there are plenty of great premium names unavailable at these TLDs. Greed or not, people are complaining here about the fact they own hundreds of other names and don’t see these kind of prices, but to me the economics seem pretty straight forward. They just happened to price these domains better than other registrars in my opinion…

[psychphysic]

That website is surely for spam purposes?

There's definitely an aftermarket for emails I don't disagree, and in some parts of the world of you have a nice phone number you will be called asking to buy it frequently.

In countries where sanctions prevent access you can buy apple, Google, PSN etc accounts on scratch cards. Might be handy for privacy actually but not sure how effective that is or if sign up via VPN just as easy.