Earlier today, GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving participated in a Product Hunt LIVE AMA session. During the course of this chat, participants had the opportunity to ask Blake just about any question related to GoDaddy, the tech space, and beyond.
There were several questions that Blake answered regarding domain names and even domain name investors. In one response to a question about whether “domain resellers / sharks” are a problem, Blake came out in defense of people who invest in domain names. Here’s what he said:
“Like stocks and real estate, domain names have quantifiable value. Anytime there is a situation of supply and demand, you’re going to have people investing. Since domain names are unique, there’s an opportunity. We fully support the investors who do it the right way. These are people who look for trends and register potentially good names. They then take the risk of renewing them year after year to potentially sell them.
What we don’t support is people who register trademarks, try to extort others or do things in an unethical way—and those folks are out there. Luckily, there are formal processes in place from ICANN (the domains governing body) to root out bad players. I’ve seen it work pretty well.”
I would not really expect to see him say anything different, but it was nice to see him answer the question in a way that supports domain name investors. People who invest in domain names aren’t always looked at in a positive manner.
There were quite a few good questions and interesting answers, so you’ll want to check out Blake’s Product Hunt AMA when you have some time.
He forgot to add the part about how Godaddy (NameFind) owns a sh*t down of premium domains now. 🙂
Hadn’t thought about that, but the company is now a domain investing company essentially.
Yup, so there is motivation to defend domain investors. Godaddy is just like BuyDomains, HugeDomains, etc. GD also owns Afternic.