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Alibaba Cloud raises prices for domain name auctions amid AI compute price war

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Alibaba Cloud raises prices for domain name auctions amid AI compute price war

Alibaba Group Holding’s cloud computing unit – the service handling the online broadcasting of the 2024 Summer Olympics – has announced that it raised prices on its domain name auction platform, as the company tries to deal with rising costs while grappling with price competition for artificial intelligence (AI) services.

Starting from August 1, starting bids for domain names on Alibaba Cloud will be raised to 199 yuan for “.com” addresses and 99 yuan for other top level domains, the company said in a statement published on its official website on Saturday. Hangzhou-based Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

Alibaba Cloud’s auction platform allows potential buyers to bid for expired domain names managed through the company’s registrar, offering users a chance to access previously owned domain names rather than purchasing new ones.

The new prices are at least a 43 per cent increase from the previous 69 yuan starting bid for all domain names, which Alibaba announced in August 2023.

The company said it is hiking prices “after careful consideration” in response to “increasing service costs”, but did not elaborate.

Alibaba Cloud has also been making adjustments to its other businesses. It has announced that it would be shutting down data centres in India and Australia in July and September, respectively, which the company said is part of an “infrastructure strategy update”.

Alibaba Cloud is renowned for its extensive range of features that cater to diverse business needs:

  • Elastic Computing: The Cloud offers a variety of elastic computing services, including Elastic Compute Service (ECS) and Serverless Computing, allowing businesses to quickly scale resources based on demand.
  • Storage Solutions: From Object Storage Service (OSS) to file storage and hybrid cloud storage, Alibaba Cloud provides highly secure, reliable, and cost-effective storage solutions.
  • Networking Services:  Cloud’s networking capabilities, including Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and Content Delivery Network (CDN), ensure fast, secure, and scalable connections across the globe.
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James Barnley

I’m the editor of the DomainingAfrica. I write about internet and social media, focusing mainly on Domains. As a subscriber to my newsletter, you’ll get a lot of information on Domain Issues, ICANN, new gtld’s, Mobile technology and social media.