@rrhoover Where did you register them? Everywhere I looked had preregistration fees in the thousands. I may need to do some squatting myself 😉

@rrhoover I've been waiting for 2 years and got a reminder recently. Glad it's finally available :)

@rrhoover yep. I just pre-registered decentralized.app through GoDaddy. (crosses fingers)

@krynsky I should probably go register centralized.app

@krynsky @rdev You probably should not be publicly sharing any domains that you haven't yet acquired that you actually care about acquiring. Anyone could simply go register them now during the early access period, either because they like them and want them for their own, or because they want to resell them to you for more. If you have a domain that you really want and need, it's worth it to pay the one-time fee to acquire it during EAP. Otherwise, if you're going to roll the dice on preregistration, at least don't tell anyone else about it, or you might be competing against more people to try to get it.

@chadwhitaker Yep, there's plenty of sites that are already live and in use listed on https://get.app/

@chadwhitaker @iamsalar1 The sunrise period (when trademark holders can register their domains) ran from March 29th to May 1st. The early access program started on May 1st, and allows anyone to register domain names for a one-time fee. A huge number of domains have already been registered during the early access program.

@kristofertm Name.com: Yay.com:

@kristofertm "General availability" is what will be ~$15 everywhere if you enter something-long-and-not-premium.app

@kristofertm @rdev The second screenshot does a good job of explaining what's going on here. $3,852 is the price of registering the domain at that registrar in the current EAP tier (meaning you get it now, guaranteed), whereas the other prices are preorders for future tiers, meaning you might not be the one who's successful in acquiring it since someone else might "win" the race to register it first as that tier opens.

@rdev @cydeweys OK I think I'm catching on now. So odds are the good short domains will get swept up for those who are willing to pay $4000. If you want to wait and risk losing a domain, you can wait a week until pre-order is over, and get them for $16... Right?

@rdev @kristofertm Yes, exactly. You can see the full EAP tier schedule at https://www.registry.google . And use a non-premium domain, e.g. thisisaterribleappname.app, to get an idea for what the base price at each EAP tier looks like. The screenshots above were taken for max.app, which is a premium domain, so they're actually showing the combination of EAP and premium (which is confusing the issue a little bit).

@stermi Every registrar chooses its own price.

@abetancort We don't have any rules against subdomains, and I even encouraged their use for development purposes in my launch presentation at Google I/O. Where did you see this?

@cydeweys I saw somewhere the restrictions from HTTS to not allowing third level domains. Don’t remenber in which registrar I saw it.

@cydeweys The registrar that crealy shows that restriction is Gandi.net. Terms and Conditions Assigning: .APP domains are open to everyone. .APP is a security-focused space, meaning that HTTPS is required for all websites. The entire .APP namespace has been added to the HSTS Preload list. To work properly in browsers, You will need to obtain a SSL certificate and configure the HTTPS serving. Syntax: from 1 to 63 alphanumeric characters or a hyphen (excluding in the first and last place and third and fourth place) IDN (accented domain names): yes Registration period: 1 to 10 years during general availability, 1 year during Sunrise and Lanrush periods * Third-level domains: no Private domain registration: yes, with Gandi's option Whois privacy

@abetancort Maybe that's a limitation of Gandi's DNS system if you choose to use their nameservers and/or host with them? Or maybe it means they can't provision wildcard SSL certs? Regardless, I can assure you it's not a limitation of .app itself.

@cydeweys @abetancort not a TLD restriction. No registrar would have supported them. Contact the guys at Gandi - they have good support and I'd be highly surprised if they don't allow subs

@ouaibou From the ones we tested it looks like the renewal is the same as the registration. i.e. if it costs $1000 to pre-register, it's $1000 to renew. Godaddy has a hyperlink below hte price that gives more info.

@rdev The high registration definitely helps to hedge against [many] squatters, but you can pre-register at GoDaddy, Yay, and many others for $15-20. They'll execute the order as soon as public registration happens on the 8th. Yay.com is advertising a 99.6% success rate, but according to GoDaddy domains with multiple claims will be auctioned.

@rdev See https://www.registry.google for a full explanation of the Early Access Program. The initial registration fee will continue going down throughout the period and will hit $0 once we reach General Availability at 2018-05-08 16:00:00Z.

@mballance on every registrar any reasonable domain is tagged as Premium™ and costs a fortune. It helps against squatters, yes, but it also helps against legitimate buyers that can't afford spending $1299 on a domain name 🤷🏻‍♂️ And for the domains that you can get at a normal price you can also get a whole bunch of other domains like io/im/sh/etc. It's great for big companies though, so they can have uber.app and stuff. But for people like indie developers it's a bit too expensive

@mballance @rdev That was during the early access program. Check again now that we're in general availability. Domains are now available for as little as $14/yr depending on registrar.

@mballance @rdev registries price the domains at a wholesale cost (in this case Google REGISTRY) and registrars then mark it up (usually by anywhere from 20-40%). Registries (again, Google registry, NOT Google domains/Godaddy/Namecheap) also determine whether or not any domain is priced as a premium domain. For example "best.app" or "bestest.app" may cost $500 wholesale, instead of $10. It's hardly ever the registrar that considers a domain "premium" or not. Usually premium domains are sold AT registrars by domainers (they've been called squatters in this thread) that registered them early, not by the registrar itself. The one exception to the last paragraph is when a domain is what is called "dropcaught". If you for example registered best.app and forget to renew it or don't want to renew it, a dropcatcher can pre-register trying to get the domain as soon as it's back in the pool. I have a hard time understanding why people feel so bitter about domain prices being high. It's like the stock market... you can buy stocks of any company you like and then they become more expensive for everyone else. The domainer (squatter) has to make the upfront investment and hope that as many of his domains as possible will sell at a premium price. Simple market economy, no?! :-)

@tostartafire The point of the early access and premium prices is to help prevent squatting. If you really want a name, you can get it. If all prices were low, then all the good ones would instantly be snatched up by squatters as soon as they became available, and then you'd have to turn around and pay much more to a squatter to get a good one. The high prices keep the squatters out, as it's simply too costly to acquire all the good ones up-front in hopes of being able to re-sell enough of them at a profit to make that all back. The same problem happens with concert tickets -- If they're priced too low, they all get snatched up by scalpers the second they're available and then the real fans have to pay a much higher inflated price. It's better for the concert tickets to be priced appropriately from the get go, which limits scalping and helps stabilize the price that a fan pays.

@tostartafire @tcodinat There's no way a system like that scales though. We're closing in on 14,000 domains already, and we're still in the early access program. Individual contracting and enforcement would be a nightmare from an operational perspective, and the pricing would have to be much higher than the expected $14-24 at retail in GA to fund all that enforcement. Some other TLD operators have tried much more restrictive registration policies, and almost unanimously those TLDs see low volumes of registration and use. Our goal is to improve the security of the Web by moving more sites to HTTPS (and mobile-centric sites especially need it), and that happens best by seeing a lot of these domains being used.

This is the most koolaid-drunk theory of economics I've ever heard

@cydeweys Just curious, what will be the average price for .app domains, after early access program?

@williamhutech It'll vary depending on the price each registrar sets, but expect to see the majority of prices in the neighborhood of $14-24.

@williamhutech @cydeweys and What would it be thru Google Domains?

@williamhutech @abetancort They're live now so you can now check on their site.