Latest news of the domain name industry

Recent Posts

Go Daddy follows Google out of China

Kevin Murphy, March 24, 2010, Domain Registrars

Go Daddy is to stop accepting new .cn registrations, after CNNIC demanded that it start collecting photographs and signed registration documents from Chinese customers.
General counsel Christine Jones told the Congressional Executive Committee on China that Go Daddy has also seen an increase in DDoS attacks, specifically against human rights sites that it hosts.
“Domain name registrars, including Go Daddy, were then instructed to obtain photo identification, business identification, and physical signed registration forms from all existing .CN domain name registrants who are Chinese nationals, and to provide copies of those documents to CNNIC,” she said.
Any domain without such documentation would have been blocked by China, she said.
“For these reasons, we have decided to discontinue offering new .CN domain names at this time. We continue to manage the .CN domain names of our existing customers,” she said.
Go Daddy has about 1,200 Chinese customers and 27,000 .cn domains on its books. The company is not going to block Chinese customers. What China will do about them remains to be seen.
The move comes at a tense time for US-China internet relations, with Google grabbing headlines all week due to its ongoing censorship row with the country.
Jones denied the move has anything to do with Google. “We made the decision that we didn’t want to act as an agent of the Chinese government,” she said.
I’ve uploaded a PDF of her written testimony here.

Is Go Daddy’s size a competition concern?

Kevin Murphy, March 17, 2010, Domain Registrars

Go Daddy is undoubtedly the runaway success story of the domain name industry.
It may not be as big as VeriSign, but unlike VeriSign it was not simply handed a multi-billion dollar resource to manage. It was essentially scratch-built. It didn’t even have first-mover advantage – Register.com and Network Solutions had that, and Go Daddy’s been eating their lunches for years.
The company has got where it is today through, in my opinion, a combination of cheap prices, decent customer service and populist marketing. Mainly the cheap prices, but I doubt that putting a great big pair of boobs on TV during the Super Bowl can have hurt sales.
But how big is the company? And with the introduction of new gTLDs, is its size now a cause for concern? (continue reading)

Go Daddy busts through 40 million mark

Kevin Murphy, March 10, 2010, Domain Registrars

Go Daddy has registered its 40 millionth domain, and it’s closing in on a 50% market share.
The company said that it is now three times the size of its nearest competitor, eNom, and is registering, renewing or transferring one domain per second on average.
Adding domains at a rate of one million per month, Go Daddy could feasibly break through 50 million by the end of the year, but seasonal ups and downs may make early 2011 a more likely timeframe. Go Daddy tends to see a spike in sales after its notorious Super Bowl commercials.
The registrant of the company’s 40 millionth domain does not want his or her identity revealed.