Yahoo has slashed its domain name pricing to $4.98 a year through Dec. 31, continuing a pricing war among major hosting companies. The aggressive move comes just just four months after Yahoo dropped its price to $9.95 a year as part of a major push to expand its share of the shared hosting market.

The new pricing undercuts previous leader 1&1 Internet by nearly a dollar. While 1&1 operates its own ICANN-accredited registry, Yahoo continues to operate as a reseller for Melbourne IT, the Australian domain name registry that focuses on the wholesale market. While it's not known precisely what Yahoo is paying per domain, few registrars offer domains to resellers at prices below $6.50 per domain. Since it is likely selling at a loss, Yahoo has limited the offer to one domain per customer, preventing arbitrage-related bulk purchases by owners of large domain portfolios.

Yahoo's move may be a response to Interland, a major competitor in the small business hosting market, which last month lowered its domain name pricing to $7.95 a year, and was immediately rewarded with a one-month gain of 132K hostnames.

Click HERE for more info & Complete Retail Domain Name Prices List (Dec2004)...


Source : NetCraft