Hacker News Reader

Comment by yellow_lead | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone trust them to maintain these for 100 years? This is a money grab - "Pay us up front for 100 years of service." No doubt the terms will include plenty of wiggleroom for the company to backtrack on these promises.

* we maintain multiple backups of your content across geographically distributed data center

* 24/7 Premier Support

* The very best managed WordPress experience with unmetered bandwidth, best-in-class speed, and unstoppable security bundled in one convenient package.

View on HN

They own .blog so I am guessing they can at least keep that part of the bargain. As to what level of service they can maintain over 100 years, or whether the web as we know it will continue to exist, remains to be seen.

just like unlimited yahoo mail space, or google's unlimited email space or that airline from 80's that took back through technicalities the "lifetime" ticket, no?

I would not trust anything that's long term more than 10 years, and even that is a stretch. I agree with GP, it's a cash grab.

>or that airline from 80's that took back through technicalities the "lifetime" ticket, no

As far as I'm aware American Airlines only revoked two lifetime AAirpasses of the 60+ sold; both were accused of using their companion pass fraudulently. From what I remember one was accused of approaching people at the airport and attempting to sell his companion seat, the other was accused of using his companion pass to book a seat next to his for a nonexistent person so he wouldn't have to sit next to anyone.

We don’t even have to go back to the 80s to find this kind of impermanence.

When the war between Ukraine and Russia first started, energy prices in Europe skyrocketed, causing several utility companies to cancel their customers’ existing fixed-rate plans, to instead pass on all expenses.

Force majeure is almost always an exception to contracts, and for good reason.

and yet it probably would not have been "force majeure" if it had gone the other way

Google never had unlimited email space. They launched at 1GB (which seemed huge) and increased it over the years, but it was never unlimited.

They marketed it at the time as being "unlimited", which at the time was a reasonably fair description

Can you point to any archived material with that claim? Many of us have been around to remember everything from that time period, and they never made such a claim in my memory. When Gmail launched there was a very prominent bar graph at the bottom of every page that told you how much storage you were using and how much was available.

I was around at that time and I definitely remember the 'unlimited' phrase in the press. I'm sure youre also correct about the bar graph though. Although as I remember it they kept lifting the ceiling of that bar graph faster than anyone could fill it up

All of those services maintain a clause stating they can revoke that "unlimited" service at-will. I doubt that's the case here.

Plus consider how many people are going to really care about this deal being upheld in 100 years.

Say a buyer of this service dies in 50 years. Would their children and potential grandchildren want to take Wordpress to court over the $15,000 valued in 2023 dollars? I would assume not.

This is a terrible deal for a lot of people. Perhaps the better investment would be putting the $35,000 into buying land somewhere random and hope it appreciates in value for one's descendants.

Think about it for a second, some people may want their website to live on past their death. This is a way to keep the domain alive for at least 100 years.

Say 50-60 years pass. Wordpress gets acquired by a dodgy company who decides they're OK terminating this deal because they consider the risk of litigation low.

It would be difficult to know if Wordpress (or future acquiring company) is keeping their end of the deal after one's death.

The world could end the next day or domains sunsetted. You can't rely on the future for anything but this gives you a chance.

No, its a way to pay 5x domain cost for a promise from a corporation.

If they could guarantee a site function for 100 years this could be an insane bargain if you’ve been anywhere near what a retainer with an agency would cost.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com