Look what happened to secure certificates (Score 2)

Just a quick question. Does anyone remember what happened to the price of secure certificates for web sites after verisign purchased Thawte? You used to be able to get a secure certificate for your website for about $40.00 if it was for personal use. Now the cheapest one is $395 for the same functionality. This is almost a 10x increase. Unless generating a secure certificate is has suddenly become an order of magnitude more expensive, I guess this would appear to be monopoly exploitation of the worst form. Given their "history" what is stopping them from charging $500 for a .com domain?