Just a few days ago, GoDaddy lost a substantial part of its customer base, thanks to its support of SOPA. Nearly seventy four thousand domains were withdrawn from GoDaddy in five days. XDA forum joined the exodus list recently. Supporting SOPA has indeed proved to be bad for business (in case of GoDaddy). However, it is interesting to note that GoDaddy was supporting a bill that only made it guiltier in an ongoing case.

GoDaddy supported SOPA while fighting a court-case against the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). In this case, GoDaddy was sued for registering a few domains, which people used to promote the Oscar event. The proceedings of the case went to extreme levels requiring GoDaddy to explain its business practices, especially how it makes money with parked domains. GoDaddy founder and ex-CEO Bob Parson had a tough time facing 74,000 lost domains and a strong court case against it, which read as,

Suing under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, the Academy disputes more than a 100 domain names, including 2011oscars.com, academyawardz.com, jaylenososcars.com, betacademyawards.com, oscarsunplugged.com, oscarshotels.com, oscarstravel.com, oscarsliveblogging.com … etc. Damages could total as much as $10 million.

Clearly, GoDaddy knew that supporting SOPA was absolutely weakening its case. So why did it support the bill after all? Probably, it was hoping to waive the case off. However, it did not know that sharks are not to be befriended.

As you may already know, SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, is an internet regulatory bill that is being proposed in the U.S. House of Representatives.

According to Wikipedia, SOPA would:
“allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Depending on who requests the court orders, the actions could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators such as PayPal from doing business with the allegedly infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such sites, and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites. The bill would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a felony. The bill also gives immunity to Internet services that voluntarily take action against websites dedicated to infringement, while making liable for damages any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement.“

Yesterday, we reported that GoDaddy, a premier domain registry service, was one of 150 backers of the SOPA regulations. As a result, dozens of companies and individuals either left GoDaddy’s services or threatened to leave them.

Later, GoDaddy flip-flopped and is “backing off” in its support of SOPA. It’s doubtful that most people believe GoDaddy’s stated reasons for changing this position. GoDaddy’s CEO, Warren Adelman, was quoted as saying There has to be concensus about the leadership of the internet community. It’s a large community and a global one.

I believe that the threat of losing business has more to do with GoDaddy’s change of heart concerning SOPA than any concern about a concensus. Up until now, GoDaddy seemed to be more concerned about protecting the wishes of big government and big media groups such as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

Firstly, I can’t understand why the GoDaddy execs decided that it was a good idea for them to work on regulating the internet. Secondly, I think SOPA is a bad idea, not the answer to a problem that mainly exists in the meeting rooms of a multi-billion dollar entertainment industry. The cost of regulations are always paid by consumers, and internet users will end up paying the price if the SOPA supporters get their way. I hope that this flip-flop from GoDaddy is a sign that internet users are being heard, and that their voices are crying “The internet is not broken – stop trying to fix it“.

via American Censorship

When the list of supporters for the Stop Online Privacy Act of the United States of America was put up online, many of the companies were large storehouses of copyrighted information and were predictably backing up this Act. However, one prominent company in that list was GoDaddy. GoDaddy is the largest domain name registrar of the world with [and I quote their own post] around 50 million names registered   to their service.

This did not sit well with Reddit user selfprodigy. Selfprodigy moved 51 domains of his small business, his personal domain, as well as threatening to move 300 domains of his company, whose IT he manages, away from GoDaddy.

I just finished writing GoDaddy a letter stating why I’m moving my small businesses 51 domains away from them, as well as my personal domains. I also pointed out that i transferred over 300 domains to them as a director of IT for a major American company.

The end result of this post? A massive exodus from GoDaddy to other registrars such as Namecheap and Hostgator. Joining the ranks of these people is Ben Huh, the CEO of the famous (?) Cheezburger group of sites, threatening to move his 1,000 domains away from GoDaddy unless they stop supporting the SOPA:-

We will move our 1,000 domains off @godaddy unless you drop support of SOPA. We love you guys, but #SOPA-is-cancer to the Free Web.

— benhuh (@benhuh) December 22, 2011

Capitalizing on this opportunity are other registrars who are all offering discounts and the like for new registrations and transfers. such as Hostgator, Name.com, EasyDNS and others.

GoDaddy’s statement on this growing concern is one of infinite confidence in itself. To it, these are but a few drops in a boundless ocean of revenue. Yet I am sure that these drops will rain upon them in a torrent of retribution (pun intended). Protect the freedom of the internet, everyone!

Go Daddy Group Inc, the big daddy of domain name registrar has now been sold to a group of private equity firm for 2.25 Billion, Techie Buzz has learned.

The buyers include KKR &Co, Silver Lake partners, Technology Crossover Ventures and a couple of more investors; the deal was finalized on Friday afternoon, according to a report from LA Times.

In a press conference earlier today, CEO Bob parsons said that he was looking forward to the deal for some time and this acquisition will help the company grow and serve more value to it’s customers and people using their services.

Bob added that Go Daddy wants to go to the Next leveland the company partnered with the firms because of their technological expertise and better understanding of a web based business.

Go Daddy is the world’s largest and one of the most trusted domain registrars till date. Most internet companies and cloud based business prefer choosing Go Daddy for the reputation they hold. And not just domain names, Go Daddy has seen massive growth in web hosting, e commerce and other services during the last couple of years. The company now manages more than 48 Million domain names and has a huge global user base of 9.3 million customers

Now that Go Daddy has been acquired, what changes are expected in the coming days?   Will customers see a rise in domain registration price or web hosting fees? If business strategies take a steep turn, it won’t be long enough when the investors start losing edge because Go Daddy is known for it’s offers and deals. It may also happen that competitors follow suit, but the latter scenario is not so strong.

Go Daddy was established by Bob Parsons in 1997 and he continues to be the operating CEO.

The craze for short domain names has always been there and now, the crazes for  shorter TLDs has entered the domain business as GoDaddy is showing .co as the default choice for domain search and registration.

With good .com domains running out fast, now people can opt for their desired domains on the CO TLD. COM has been the de-facto in domain names for over 26 years now and no matter how many TLDs like NET, ORG etc. come up, it will still be called the .com bubble.

However, GoDaddy being the biggest domain registrar is trying to be a trendsetter by using CO. This is proving advantageous for GoDaddy in two ways. Firstly, GoDaddy registers more than 50% of all web domains. That gives it a high probability of attracting customers to CO domains. Secondly, CO domains cost three times as much as COM. That will prove as an inherent benefit for selling CO domains.

Many websites have already started making a switch to CO from the initial COM. These further increases the customer base for GoDaddy and it is surely thinking business. As for myself, I see no reason to jump into the .co domain hype. right now. There are many good .com domains that have not been claimed yet and .com will work for at least a year more before .co sees some considerable acceptance.

(Source)

GoDaddy is probably the king of domain registrations and hosting solutions with it being the registrant of a significant percentage of registered domains. Now the big daddy of domain registration, e-commerce and hosting services has put itself up on sale for a staggering $1 billion.

According to WSJ, GoDaddy is up on the block for a cool sum of $1 billion. GoDaddy, which heavily advertises raunchy advertisements, specially during the Super Bowl posted revenue between $750 and $800 million in 2009 and is by far the biggest domain registrant and service provider for websites.

GoDaddy.com currently handles about 43 million domain registrations, the sale for Go Daddy Group Inc will be handled by Qatalyst Partners. GoDaddy has been known to provide steep discounts on domain registration including 99 cent domain deals to lure customers towards them. However, it would be interesting to see who they lure with the $1 billion price tag.

Come July 1 and the prices for .com domains will go by 7% and of .net by 10%. This means that every time you buy or renew your domains after July 1 you will be paying around $1 more for every domain you own.

If you have been waiting up till now head over to your domain registrar and register your domains before you have to pay the extra price.

If you are a GoDaddy customer or are looking to purchase a new domain, you can use the discount code gda652a to get a 30% discount on registrations and renewals of domains. The discount will only be available till midnight on 30 June.

Looks like Google’s brawl with China does not have a limited impact. Google’s apparently courageous act of stopping censorship of results in China despite a possible loss of half a billion dollars, is encouraging other companies to stand up against the questionable regulations proposed by the Chinese government.

GoDaddy, the largest domain registrar in the world, says they will no longer register domains in China due to a new requirement for excessive personal information. Reportedly, a new domain registration applicant in China also has to provide a photograph now in addition to lots of other information. Authorities in China claim that these regulations will help in better monitoring, however, it is quite apparent that all China wants to monitor is anything said against it. There have been numerous incidents of websites being shutdown due to having questionable content without providing any detailed explanations to the website owner or hosting provider. Most of these websites had information about topics like Tianmen Square or Human Rights.

As more and more companies like Google and GoDaddy cease or limit their operations in China, the issue will take a much more serious political turn with the two governments getting involved. Google’s Sergey Brin along with thousands of other people are already requesting the US government to take this issue up with China at the government level.

GoDaddy has been creating new ads every year for the Super Bowl. However, it looks like they are also offering a new coupon code which will allow you to register 99c domains for 1 year.

Users will be able to purchase a domain name for 1 year by just paying 99 cents, an additional ICANN fees of 18 cents will take the final price to $1.17. To avail of this offer make sure to use the coupon code BOWL2010 (thanks Slick Deals) before you checkout with your domain.

This coupon code might not lost for a long time, so hurry and get your own domain name before it expires.

GoDaddy’s 99cent coupon is live once again, last time around it did not last for long, so hurry up while you can.

An ICANN fee of $0.18 is applicable on the sale, taking the total price to $1.17, however, it is not a bad deal at all. To get your 99 cent domain, use the coupon code BUYCOM99without the quotes.