They offer EV certs, so there's some cost involved in doing the identity verification. I don't think it's $234 dollars a year, forever, but it costs something. And that's actually a pretty competitive price for an EV certificate.

While I also look forward to letsencrypt being generally available, the fact your parent comment charges $234/yr for a cert is in response to:

> I'd actually pay more than I do now for SSL certs to get that kind of simplicity.