web-service purchasing price parity

ben hammersley gives some data points on international web-service pricing:

However, with services, and especially hosted services running from the same machine no matter where I access them from, it’s deeply galling to see weird dual pricing. As a European, too, it seems that we on this side of the Atlantic always get the shitty end of the stick.

Take Typepad. The US version, Typepad.com, comes in at $4.95 a month. Fair enough: it’s a very nice system. But Typepad.fr .de .es and .nl all cost €4.95 a month for the same thing. That’s $6.57 at today’s exchange rate. Paid by credit card too, so there’s absolutely no need for exchange rate arbitrage on Six Apart’s part.
[...]
When it comes to hosted services like these, especially where the interface, offering and hosting is exactly the same, and where the company concerned makes its living on the internet, you would expect them to understand the concept of transparent pricing.

And weblogs.