GoDaddy is a privately owned, Internet-based company that provides a variety of services including domain name registration, web hosting and e-business software sales. The company, which is headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, was founded by Bob Parsons. Parsons previously owned a financial services software company, which he sold in the mid-1990s upon retirement. He came out of retirement in 1997 to form Jomax Technologies, the predecessor to GoDaddy.
Since it’s inception, GoDaddy has risen to become the largest domain registrar in the world, with tens of million of domains registered to its clients. The company ranks as the world’s largest ICANN-accredited registrar; it’s approximately four times larger than its nearest competition. Recent corporate acquisitions include Outright, Locu, Afternic, and Media Temple.
GoDaddy has redefined Internet hosting services, and it has been the recipient of numerous industry awards and accolades. Among these awards are the 2001 Arizona BBB award for Business Ethics and the 2011 SC Magazine award for Best Security Team. In 2011, it ranked number four in the Phoenix Business Magazine list of “Best Places to Work in the Valley” and it made the 2012 Forbes list of “Best 100 Companies to Work For.”
Known for its sometimes controversial commercials and interesting spokespersons, GoDaddy also sponsors a number of charitable causes in support of domestic violence and child abuse awareness, and sports events, including NASCAR and the Super Bowl. In 2013, the company shifted its advertising strategy to focus more on small to medium sized business owners (SMB). Reflecting this change, its commercials and advertising materials shifted from “sexy” to smart.
If you regularly log in to your Afternic account, you probably noticed a change to the login screen earlier this week. There is now a “Login with GoDaddy” button below the password field to allow Afternic customers to log in to their Afternic accounts using their GoDaddy credentials:
With the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic still spreading throughout the United States and the world, companies have had to make adjustments, particularly as it relates to employees working out of the office. GoDaddy, with more than 9,000 employees, has had the bulk of its employees work from home since March of this year.
GoDaddy recently announced that most of its employees will continue to work from home through at least March of 2021. In areas of the world where working in the office is deemed safe, the company is allowing employees to return to the office. For example, employees in GoDaddy’s China office have already returned to the office.
When a blind offer to buy a domain name is received, assumptions are made about who the buyer could be or how the domain name will be used if sold. This is often the case when a domain broker submits an offer on behalf of a prospective buyer, or an offer is made via Afternic or Sedo.
More often than not, the prospective buyer is the most obvious buyer. Perhaps the owner of the matching .IO or .CO domain name is interested in buying the brand match .com domain name, or maybe a startup using an off-brand domain name wants its brand match domain name.
This morning, I saw a retweet of a tweet from Kefah Makhamre announcing the $21,000 sale of Elmt.com via Afternic:
I had a rare phone conversation with a friend about domain names yesterday. We chatted about the overall market, and I shared some of the recent pricing strategy I use when listing my domain names for sale on DAN.com and GoDaddy / Afternic. I thought I would share it here as well.
Somewhere around 60% of my domain names are listed via DAN, most with their buy it now landing pages. I have done fairly well selling domain names on DAN this year, and I have what amounts to a majority of my inventory-quality domain names listed there with BIN prices. I have nearly all of my inventory domain names listed for sale via Afternic / GoDaddy. I do not use GoDaddy landing pages, preferring to send the domain names not parked at DAN to my Embrace.com inquiry pages instead.
There’s a trending post on Hacker News that accuses GoDaddy of front running domain names that are searched for on its website:
“searched a few days ago for felons.io, looked for unique names for simple game didn’t know if I wanted it or not
guess godaddy decided for me: 1 days old Created on 2020-09-16 by GoDaddy.com, LLCjust a warning if you have a special name do not use godaddy to check if its available”
Peter Askew has done well with VidaliaOnions.com, building a successful e-commerce website selling Vidalia onions after winning the domain name in an expiry auction. As a customer, I like how easy VidaliaOnions.com is to use and buy onions, and as a colleague, I appreciate how much effort went into building and launching this successful website and business.
As part of GoDaddy’s keynote presentation at this year’s NamesCon Global conference, GoDaddy visited the farm where VidaliaOnions.com sources its onions. They spent the day with Peter and farmer Aries Haygood to learn about the business operations and growth of the vidalia onion business.
The video can be found embedded in the GoDaddy tweet below:
