GoDaddy Up For Auction 191
An anonymous reader writes "GoDaddy.com, the closely held website that registers Internet domain names, has put itself up for sale in an auction that could fetch more than $1 billion, people familiar with the matter said. The company, which currently has more than 43 million domains under management, is well known for its edgy advertising, including Super Bowl commercials and ads featuring different 'Go Daddy Girls,' including racing car driver Danica Patrick."
This Is Why Privately-Owned Registrars Are Bad (Score:1, Interesting)
Whoever buys it is able to do a rate hike and truly screw over pre-existing consumers, and that's just if they're feeling generous. There's far worse they could potentially do.
Could we see a WikiLeaks dump (Score:4, Interesting)
of GoDaddy's deep dark secrets?
Like the way they (supposedly) steal customer domain ideas after you whois a domain?
Somebody on the inside? How about it?
Also, does anybody have the link for that story from Slashdot a couple years ago, I can't find it.
Let's buy it! (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sure we could scrape together 1-2 measly billions. Who wants to setup the PayPal account for donations?
I think they overvalue themselves... (Score:1, Interesting)
They should have been smart enough to realize that anyone who needs their services already knows who they are. I highly doubt there was a Joe Six-Pack watching the super bowl who arrived at the idea after seeing the ad to go look up what a GoDaddy is, and then buy a new domain name from them.
Re:Oh... (Score:3, Interesting)
godaddy also has probably half of all the spam domains that exist - due to their lovely "auto-register a domain you searched for" shit.
Re:I think they overvalue themselves... (Score:2, Interesting)
Advertisements (Score:4, Interesting)
What practices? The most telling is the holding of domain names hostage. Any expired domain is held hostage for an amount of time until someone pays the release fee, above and beyond the registration fee. Some business will fall for this tric, but I suspect it is mostly the small user that gets hurt, losing a domain because in the pressures of family and work a domain was not renewed prior to expiration. What same person would work with such a company? Is it any wonder they are selling?
Re:I think they overvalue themselves... (Score:2, Interesting)
Worst Commercials ever..... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Oh... (Score:1, Interesting)
Invalid email address in whois is grounds for forfeiture of the domain. Those are the ICANN rules. That is one thing that should happen a lot more often.
In up to my pits.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Network Solutions redux (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe that 5 year deal with Microsoft for parking new websites on Windows IIS servers is ending so they don't know where to make profits this time. I would not leave out the option of Microsoft buying them just to keep Windows IIS marketshare numbers up and to possibly grow them.
If you don't know, Microsoft was paying GoDaddy to place parked web domains on Microsoft IIS based servers so that netcraft and other web server counting systems looked more favorable for Microsoft's web server( IIS ). Prior to that business deal, GoDaddy was parking domains on GNU/Linux apache based servers.
LoB
GoDaddy stories on Slashdot (Score:4, Interesting)
Go Daddy Usurps Network Solutions [slashdot.org] (2005-05-04)
GoDaddy Serves Blank Pages to Safari & Opera [slashdot.org] (2005-12-08)
GoDaddy.com Dumps Linux for Microsoft [slashdot.org] (2006-03-23)
GoDaddy Holds Domains Hostage [slashdot.org] (2006-06-17)
GoDaddy Caves To Irish Legal Threat [slashdot.org] (2006-09-16)
MySpace and GoDaddy Shut Down Security Site [slashdot.org] (2007-01-26) That incident prompted this web site:
Exposing the Many Reasons Not to Trust GoDaddy with Your Domain Names [nodaddy.com].
Alternative Registrars to GoDaddy? [slashdot.org] (2007-02-03)
GoDaddy Bobbles DST Changeover? [slashdot.org] (2007-03-11)
850K RegisterFly Domains Moved To GoDaddy [slashdot.org] (2007-05-29)
According to this March 11, 2008 story in Wired, GoDaddy shut down an entire web site of 250,000 pages because of one archived mailing list comment: GoDaddy Silences Police-Watchdog Site RateMyCop.com [wired.com]. See below for Slashdot's story about RateMyCop.com.
GoDaddy Silences RateMyCop.com [slashdot.org] (2008-03-12)
ICANN Moves Against GoDaddy Domain Lockdowns [slashdot.org] (2008-04-08)
GoDaddy VP Caught Bidding Against Customers [slashdot.org] (2008-06-29)
Those are just the stories until July of 2008.
Move your domains now! (Score:4, Interesting)
If they still have the same policy in place (and I will leave it up to others to check on that, as I am certainly not going to try hassling with them ever again) then this could be a disaster for anyone with a valuable domain name that is registered with GoDaddy. This "Sale" could amount to a cashing in on all those domain names they have collected. Domain names that they claim to own while only "licensing" them to the person who registered them. The new owner could easily claim they had bought all those domains and begin auctioning them off to the highest bidder. I'm not saying that they would, but it seems entirely possible and not worth the risk for anyone with a valuable domain name.
Therefore, if anyone has any domain names registered with GoDaddy, then I highly suggest you get them moved to a different registrar ASAP.
Re:Move your domains now! (Score:3, Interesting)
I manage dozens of domain names all with GoDaddy as the registrar. I have never seen this once. The only exception is if you choose their privacy service, in which case it uses a GoDaddy contact so as to hide your information... but that's not required and every registrar that offers whois privacy services does exactly the same thing.