GoDaddy Sells To Investor Group 96
wiredmikey writes "Domain name registrar and Web hosting provider GoDaddy, announced it has agreed to receive a strategic investment from private equity firms KKR, Silver Lake and Technology Crossover Ventures. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but the Wall Street Journal reported people familiar with the deal saying it could be worth approximately $2.25 billion. The Scottsdale, Arizona based company which has built its marketing around scantly-clad women, manages more than 48 million domain names."
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Hostgator WINS!
- Dan.
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There are a lot better registrars out there than hostgator. I prefer dynadot, fabulous, internet.bs.
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It was NEVER good.
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Why don't people like them? I own about 40 domains and have nothing but good service. I don't use their shared hosting though- it was too gloppy/bursty.
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That's something of an understatement, in my experience. About a third of the time, a simple fetch of a static file would take longer than a minute to start sending data. Their servers are so badly misconfigured that you'd think their setup procedure involved copious amounts of alcohol. And after providing them with exact time stamps of when problems were occurring (verified by multiple machines on different networks), they still weren't w
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What a rip off. They change way more for the exact same thing last I checked.
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You are joking, right?
Re:I have a domain at GoDaddy (Score:4, Informative)
There are several, many, other registrars. Namecheap is what I now use. So far, so good. I liked GoDaddy for a long time having been an early customer with them but their sales tactics are very heavy handed and their web site hard to use.
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I used to recommend them to clients until their marketing campaign began to splash commercials all over the place that looked more like Hooters ads than ads for a hosting service. I wasn't going to recommend serious clients to a host whose main page features some bimbo with her tits hanging out. I don't know what kind of horndog runs that company, but he's clearly in the wrong business (I recommend he try a strip club chain instead).
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It's good enough for Google, it's good enough for you- but there is a $10-20k minimum annual spend i believe.
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There are many better domain registrars out there. Namecheap, dynadot, and internet.bs are good options.
meh (Score:2, Interesting)
as an employee -- i cringe to see how our "Unique Corporate Culture" will come crashing down around us. Does this mean no more "Mario-Cart" during our breaks?
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Also, no more hookers during work hours.
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please tell me this is not true!
Cashout Before Burst (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Cashout Before Burst (Score:5, Interesting)
It's KKR.
The barbarians are at the gate.
They will pile the company, emit dividends with wherever cash there's in the company, mass layoff employees, break it up in separate divisions and sell it.
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No it does not make sense. There is a huge difference between frugal management (which you describe) and the corporate raider behavior described by the other AC. In those 2.5 years, how many "massive layoffs" and company break up did you witness?
Frugal management sucks from the employees perspective, but it usually allow the company to survive, just like the IMF takeovers are unpleasant but can save a country from bankruptcy.
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Frugal management sucks from the employees perspective, but it usually allow the company to survive, just like the IMF takeovers are unpleasant but can save a country from bankruptcy.
You mean the IMF takeovers that result in things like large proportions of the population losing access to clean water because the IMF forced the government to sell off their water supplies at a knock-down price to a company that decided it only made financial sense to serve the uber-rich? Those IMF takeovers?
Actually, it's probably not a bad analogy - both attempt to improve short-term finances and enrich third parties at the expense of the long-term health and stability of the country or business.
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> You mean the IMF takeovers that result in things like large proportions of the population losing access to clean water
It is a well-known fact that the IMF and its Death Squads of bankers lurk in the dark, waiting for an opportunity to step in and prevent common people from having clean water. I would have to check their website and read the mission statement, but I am pretty sure they also aim to steal organs from orphans and sell them to old rich guys.
If the IMF was not a bunch of crooks, when they ta
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It is a well-known fact that the IMF and its Death Squads of bankers lurk in the dark, waiting for an opportunity to step in and prevent common people from having clean water.
Actually, the worst part is that it's probably not even intentional; the people running the IMF really do seem to believe that there's nothing the free market can't solve and that cutting government spending is always harmless. Well, so long as it's not a country they care about anyway.
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This makes no sense whatsoever. First of all, Godaddy never completed its IPO and private equity firms rarely invest billions of dollars in a private company just to leech on its cash... As for breaking up the company, exactly how do you suggest KKR would do it (supposing that they are a majority partner, which nobody can confirm)? Separate the registrar and hosting departments? Spin-off the IT department to compete the Geek Squad? Completely ludicrous.
As for "Barbarians at the gate": it is a bidding war f
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It's also mentioned that Silver Lake is also one of the partners here. The same Silver Lake that just fired the entire Skype executive structure prior to the sale to Microsoft to reduce the amount of profit they have to share.
I can see this going badly for GoDaddy. More like GoneDaddy.
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When people start talking about a trillion dollar valuation for Facebook [wsj.com], you know there is something wrong. Facebook has good revenue growth, [wikipedia.org] but come on.
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The Support/Call center for Godaddy is actually in Scottsdale Arizona.
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If you have money in a 401(k) or RRSP (in Canada), odds are that *you* are one of the happy investors.
This is the fun part in capitalism. You work hard and put a little money aside for your retirement. Since you want this money to grow and at least beat inflation, you invest in a mutual fund. That fund pools money from thousands of small investors and takes huge positions in the stock market - but also in order to mitigate risks it creates partnerships with private equity firms (such as KKR) to have assets
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The original owner, Bob Parsons, is also staying. He is now the business manager, so not much should change.
Godaddy Alternatives (Score:5, Informative)
Namecheap has the best interface I've encountered.
Moniker is so-so. The interface is somewhat clunky, and it doesn't register domains as fast as Namecheap. For multiple domains, it puts them into a batch job that starts executing a few minutes later.
Any other good ones?
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I've stuck with namecheap over the years because they offer a lot of services for free that other registrar's charge extra for (DNS hosting, email forwarding, etc).
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Dynadot has definitely won my loyalty. They have bulk registration and a very clean interface. Also, they have a lot of coupons periodically for transfers and certain TLDs. I used to just buy my domains through my web host but I've since transfered them all to Dynadot.
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I find it much easier to use the namecheap interfaces. It is possible to order a domain through a shared hosting provider, but I prefer to order the domain and web hosting seperately.
enomcentral.com (Score:2)
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DreamHost (Score:1)
Nearlyfreespeech (Score:2)
www.nearlyfreespeech.net [nearlyfreespeech.net] will register your domains, host your website, forward your mail, and do it all without the soul-sucking experience you get everywhere else. Speaking as a satisfied customer.
namesilo.com (Score:1)
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Thanks for this, it seems to have some good features, and it beats even Namecheap on price.
Have you used the interface? Is it easy to make mass updates (select the domains you want to change, and then update nameservers en masse?)
Re:Godaddy Alternatives for DNSSEC? (Score:1)
I have no points to mod up the parent, but I would like to ask the same question.
Does any other registrar support DNSSEC?
I've looked at register.com, 1and1, and dyndns, but godaddy was the only one that supported DNSSEC (and it was even simple to configure).
GoDaddy Girls (Score:5, Interesting)
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I've used GoDaddy for many years but have started to shy away from them recently due to the girls being just a little over the top for a professional business
And those commercials with the elderly lady doing a strip tease did not do anything for me.
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I've used GoDaddy for many years but have started to shy away from them recently due to the girls being just a little over the top for a professional business
And those commercials with the elderly lady doing a strip tease did not do anything for me.
Real soon now: GoGranny.
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I still use them and I still recommend them on account of their excellent telephone customer service. But I'll definitely be keeping an eye on how things turn out with this.
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Plastering everywhere on the site?
Just checking their site: on the front page, there is one image and a few videos with girls. And the commercials, the merchandise and the blog highlight the girls.
But there are no girls on the major nav sections, except for domains, and none on the support or account creation. Most of the site has no models at all, not surprising since they probably charge per page.
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Well one of the GoDaddy girls at least has a day job if they change marketing themes: Danica Patrick, Indy Car/NASCAR racer.
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3DPD.
'nuff said.
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I had the exact same experience. I don't know who their CEO is, but I suspect he got his career start running strip clubs. Their marketing is way too embarrassing for anyone to recommend them. I got to where I was scared of copping a sexual harassment allegation for even directing anyone to their website.
The key to their success (Score:2)
Always respected GD because... (Score:5, Interesting)
To my knowledge they were one of the very few SSL providers which immediately revoked (and redistributed) every SSL certificate made with openssl when the Debian SSL disaster struck in 2008.
And well; coming from Europe I have to say that the continuous examples as to how prude the US actually is always makes me chuckle. The banned superbowl commercials for example; when looking at those I often have a hard time understanding what the fuss is all about.
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I doubt the commercials were really banned. Marketing just says they are to pique people's curiosity and get them to visit the website. There's a rather wide gulf between watching a commercial for a website on TV, and getting people to actuall
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To my knowledge they were one of the very few SSL providers which immediately revoked (and redistributed) every SSL certificate made with openssl when the Debian SSL disaster struck in 2008.
That is utterly WRONG and FALSE!
I was one of the people that was affected by Debian OpenSSL screwup. I had an SSL certificate with GoDaddy. I had revoked the certificate and asked if I could reissue another, for the duration of the original at least. I was flatly told NO by GoDaddy support.
So, it is utterly INCORRECT that GoDaddy reissued every certificate for people affected by Debian OpenSSL security issue.
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The banned superbowl commercials for example
No, they were banned because if fat, Dorito-munching Americans thought they could get girlfriends, they wouldn't be sitting in front of the TV watching the Superbowl.
Genius investment. (Score:1)
scantly-clad women,
By which, I presume, they mean SCANTILY-clad women?
Also, this seems like investing in MySpace. People already were tired of a lot of GoDaddy practices, including the crap site full of attempts to pile on "value-adds" at the end of a purchase. Those who weren't tired of that were getting tired of the CEO's antics. All this will do is coax those who have meant to get around to switching registrars to finally do it. The only people who will still keep using GoDaddy will be a rank similar to those who still use
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This is going to be fun to watch in the next three years.
My thoughts exactly. So much drama.
Amount of domains (Score:2)
This is somewhat off topic, but I found this part of the article interesting: "The Scottsdale, Arizona based company [...] manages more than 48 million domain names."
According to http://www.domaintools.com/internet-statistics/ [domaintools.com], there are now 95 million .com domains, 14 million .net and 9 million .org.
Given that there are 7 billion people in the world (of which a lot use the internet), and afaik many of them register domains, not to mention all the squatters and companies, I find this a surprisingly small am
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Don't forget the millions and millions of local domains (.co.uk, .us, .it, .co, .za, etc.).
Also, 100 million domains translates to about 1 .com domain for every 10 people using the internet (assuming 1/6 of the world population uses the net at least once a year, I didn't look it up now, but it's around there) - which means the average domain has 10 unique page views per year (that's really, really few), is it still really so hard to believe?
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Damn! (Score:2)
Daaammiiitttt (Score:2)
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I've transferred domains a ton of times and never had an issue. Your nameserver settings will remain the same, unless you're transferring a .eu domain. For .com/.net/.org you won't have any downtime.
Portfolio malfunction? (Score:1)
it could be worth approximately $2.25 billion
I wonder if they will suffer another new kind of malfunction - cash malfunction, value slipping down.
Who is KKR? (Score:1)
For your clicking convenience - lol
KKR Pioneer in leveraged buy-outs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohlberg_Kravis_Roberts [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_Kohlberg,_Jr [wikipedia.org].
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kravis [wikipedia.org]
Silverlake Partners
also tech investors
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Lake_Partners [wikipedia.org]
SKYPE
Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board announce the acquisition of 65% of Skype for $1.9 billion from E-Bay, valuing the business at $2.75 billion
From the Wikipedia
"Early
TAKE THAT !!! (Score:1)
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Google bid for Nortel, what the hell does that have to do with GoDaddy?
Crappy service, it's a racket; Hope it's disolved. (Score:3)
I've had the displeasure of setting up hosting for people who've purchased their domains from GoDaddy.
There's always some problem or another; Some basic task will just not work for no reason until you transfer the domain away from their greedy little paws.
Most recently it was the MX records of a local non-profit's site. The .com MX records would simply not correctly point to the hosting provider's MX records. Thankfully I quickly purchased the .org companion domain in the non-profit's name via their hosting provider, and we used the .org site's mailing instead (until the .com was transferred -- the hosting plan included 3 domain names). GoDaddy tech support said they were aware of the issue, had their techs working on the problem, and would notify me when it was fixed -- It didn't get "fixed" for 6 months.
I once searched and searched for a short catchy name to use for my software product that wasn't taken yet... I actually came up with a fitting name that didn't turn up any Google results or whois queries. I was already had the GoDaddy site open in a tab -- managing a client's domain -- so I quickly searched with GoDaddy to ensure the domain wasn't taken -- GoDaddy showed the domain was available, and at the lowest standard price too!
That night, at home, I couldn't register the domain via a different Registrar. I gave up after trying 3 other hosts, frustrated and upset. Two days later, I was at GoDaddy, and just impulsively entered the domain name I wanted -- It was shown as available?! However, the price had risen -- a 10 fold increase! I scratched my head, and a phone call interrupted me.
About an hour later I tried to register the domain from GoDaddy and it had already sold.
Apparently if you search for a domain on GoDaddy, they immediately reserve it. This prevents you from using another Registrar to purchase the domain, but it keeps others from snatching it away -- This benefit is utterly destroyed as they then advertise the domain you searched for as a "premium" domain to other shoppers and allow them to "back-order" it in the event that you don't complete your purchase before your "grace period" expires. Thereby ensuring that if you search for your domain on GoDaddy, you must purchase it via GoDaddy. (I've added their site to my hosts file blacklists at home).
Ultimately I tried contacting the registrant -- They turned out to be domain squatters who auctioned off domains via automated online auction sites, and wanted to sell it to me for even more money than they were auctioning it off at. I refused on principal; I would not fund such a practice.
As with other items that have a demand and (artificial) scarcity, a market was formed around the domain names. This is why new URIs are typically terrible...
I suppose I could register WhereHaveAllTheDomainNamesGoneDamnIt.com, but I think I'll just start spam searching crappy names like that to drive up their prices and cause some mischief instead.