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GoDaddy Auctions Outbid Email Should Have High Bid Amount

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When I place a bid on an auction at GoDaddy Auctions, I receive an email with my maximum bid amount. I typically place my bids on the morning, and the auctions close several hours later in the afternoon. By that time, I’ve lost track of how much I initially bid on the auction.

If I am outbid on an auction, I also receive an email from GoDaddy to notify me. For some unknown reason, GoDaddy Auctions does not state the current high bid in those emails, and I find it frustrating. Here’s an example of an outbid notice I received yesterday afternoon:

More Consolidation in the Registry Space with GoDaddy Acquisitions

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GoDaddy made a major announcement in a press release yesterday afternoon. The publicly traded company intends to purchase .Club, .Design, and Minds & Machines (MMX) TLDs. These TLDs will be folded into the company’s GoDaddy Registry division. Terms of the acquisition of .Club and .Design were not disclosed, but GoDaddy will be paying $120 million USD for MMX assets, subject to various approvals. MMX is traded publicly on the London Stock Exchange.

GoDaddy Hiring Director of its NameFind Portfolio

NameFind is the domain name portfolio company owned by GoDaddy. NameFind owns hundreds of thousands of domain names following acquisitions of several large domain portfolios (Uniregistry, Marchex, Berkens…etc.).

GoDaddy posted a job listing for a Director-level position with NameFind, according to a tweet from Paul Nicks, VP of the Aftermarket at GoDaddy:

GoDaddy Reports Nine 6 Figure Sales from November 2020

GoDaddy has started reporting some of its top domain name sales on a trailing basis, with the approval of both the buyer and the seller. This morning, GoDaddy reported a handful of its top domain name sales from November of 2020. Nine of these domain name sales were in the six figure range.

The top publicly reported sale in GoDaddy’s report is Exclusive.com, which sold for $350,000. I believe the domain name had been owned by Merlin Kauffman’s company, True Magic, prior to the sale. The domain name now has a coming soon page, and it appears to be some sort of payments company that will be using the domain name.

GoDaddy Auctions Wins Can Still be Cancelled

In 2017, GoDaddy changed its domain name expiry process. As far as I understood, this change was going to pretty much eliminate the ability for a domain registrant to renew a domain name once it went to auction for domain names registered at GoDaddy. I know this doesn’t apply for domain names registered at auction partner registrars like Enom, but I thought GoDaddy-registered names that went to auction could no longer be renewed post-auction.

It was always frustrating to participate in an auction, submit payment, and then receive the cancelation and refund email. It’s a frustrating experience and a waste of time.

Earlier today on Twitter, I was mentioned in a tweet by the winning bidder of ChicagoPizza.com. Apparently, this person won the auction for ChicagoPizza.com and the auction was cancelled. The winning bid for the domain name was $9,400, as archived by NameBio.

GoDaddy’s Joe Styler responded to the tweet thread:

GoDaddy Changing Lock Policy Regarding Legal Disputes

Last week, I wrote an article sharing my opinion that a domain name should not be locked by GoDaddy in a legal dispute unless a court order is received – with very few exceptions.  This came to my attention after reading about GoDaddy’s decision to lock domain names owned by Brent Oxley in response to litigation that was filed.

At several points during the discussion on NamePros, GoDaddy VP Paul Nicks commented that GoDaddy was working with outside groups to make a determination about whether or not its legal locking policy needs to be updated or revised. Yesterday afternoon, Paul shared another update to let people know the decision was reversed and the company has updated its policy: