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.
Paul Nicks, VP and GM of the Aftermarket at GoDaddy, published an article on the GoDaddy Blog this evening that is concerning to me as a GoDaddy customer, especially because I am an active bidder on GoDaddy Auctions. Paul tweeted a link to the article via his Twitter account a short while ago:
For my domains followers, I wanted to update you on a serious situation we had brought to our attention. https://t.co/jis04Q7kwa
— Paul Nicks (@PaulENicks) March 29, 2019
Today is International Women’s Day, and organizations and businesses around the world are celebrating and honoring women and highlighting the importance of gender equality and gender balance. GoDaddy, the largest company in the domain name business, has made gender equality a corporate priority for the last several years. In fact, you may recall that Paul Nicks wrote an article about women in the domain industry several years ago, and the company has been striving to improve its diversity and equality.
To that end, GoDaddy is an active participant in International Women’s Day, and the company shared a number of ways it is celebrating women and the importance of gender equality in its business and among its customers.
Karen Tillman, GoDaddy’s Chief Communications Officer, had this to say about how International Women’s Day and how GoDaddy is participating in the holiday:
Email spam filters have gotten pretty good at catching phishing attempts. Most of the time, phishing emails are caught and or blocked by email providers and never even seen by the intended recipient. In some cases, the emails make it to the user’s inbox but are marked as spam / junk. This helps prevent phishing, but it’s not foolproof, and phishing or spearphishing are not always obvious.
Earlier this week, GoDaddy made a pretty big change to its Offer/Counter Offer (OCO) pages for domain names listed for sale via GoDaddy Auctions. The new landing pages have more details about the domain name listings and share information about its appraised value and comparable sales. Of note, listings with Buy It Now prices were not updated with the new landing page design.
The objective of the redesigned landing page is to give prospective buyers more information to make a data-driven purchase decision. I was also told the company overhauled the backend for these OCO listings (new APIs and moving to cloud) for better performance.
The New York Stock Exchange has a video series called “Walk This Way,” featuring an executive interview through the company’s headquarters. This week, Betty Liu of the NYSE interviewed GoDaddy CEO Scott Wagner as he walked through GoDaddy’s headquarters showing off some of the features in the large office complex.
In this brief walking interview, Scott answered questions about the traits of people GoDaddy typically hires, who he would hire if he could hire anyone in history, the best and worst advice he received, and a bit about his morning routine.
Here’s the LinkedIn post with accompanying video:
I was browsing the New York Post on my iPhone this morning when a GoDaddy banner advertisement caught my attention. The banner was highlighting three new gTLD domain names: You.Training, You.Fitness, and You.Coach:
