Why is .net more expensive than .com?

I'm renewing some domains, and it's $10.69 + $0.18 ICANN for .com while it's $11.48 + $0.18 ICANN for .net and $11.48 for .org.

Is this to stop people from purchasing .net and .org in addition to .com?

I'm just trying to figure out without looking into domaining news what the deal with the pricing is.

Hmm, that's interesting news. I wouldn't know either but thankfully I only own 1 .org domain.

My guess is the .com backend has been optimized to a point where its indexing and whois control is much cheaper than others, so .com incurs in less backend costs than other TLDs.

Also I think this can be seen as an incentive to centralize most brand names to .com only, which in turn uses the optimized backend.

i would guess it has something to do with the fact that almost all good names in the .com space are taken, so thats why places like godaddy have the 99c deals on .com's only, cos its difficult to find a good name on that, whereas the .net/.org names are lot easier to find (and so they charge more for them)... thats my guess anyway