GoDaddy Web Hosting Company

Go Daddy is the second domain name registrar in the world after Namecheap. GoDaddy Group supports about 60 million domain names in the largest first-level domain zones, including COM, ORG, NET, BIZ, INFO, RU. In May 2017, GoDaddy has approximately 17 million customers and over 6,000 employees worldwide. The company is known for its TV and newspaper advertising. GoDaddy is currently the largest domain registrar organization in the world, according to ICANN. It is the largest domain name registrar in the world affiliated with ICANN, and has three times more domain names than its direct competitor. In 2010, GoDaddy managed nearly 40 million domains, making it the world's largest registrar, ahead of Enom and Tucows. The total of registered addresses was estimated at 55 million in March 2013, so GoDaddy manages more than the nine other major registrars together. Every day, 50,000 domains are added, in total GoDaddy owned eleven million customers. GoDaddy is known to the general public for its large-scale advertising campaigns, including advertising at the 2005, 2007, 2010, 2011 and 2012 Super Bowl editions, and its racing vehicle sponsorship. cars such as Dale Earnhardt Jr, Mark Martin, Ron Fellows in NASCAR or Danica Patrick in IndyCar.

History

The September 10, 2012, GoDaddy is experiencing a major breakdown for several hours, 50 million web site are inaccessible. A Twitter user, claiming to be a member of the Anonymous network, claims a DDoS attack and announces that he caused the failure.

A few hours later, this announcement is denied by GoDaddy, who imputes the failure to a series of internal events that corrupted their data.

GoDaddy has published several press releases announcing support for the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). This support led to the creation of groups calling for a boycott of GoDaddy, including via godaddyboycott.org, supported by groups on Reddit and various sites. Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, announced on Twitter and Facebook that he would leave GoDaddy. On Friday, December 23, 2011, more than 23,000 domain names left GoDaddy.

In December 2016, GoDaddy announces the acquisition of Host Europe Group for 1.69 billion euros, including debts, which belonged to the Cinven fund.

On January 23, 2018, the firm announces the acquisition of Main Street Hub. The amount of this operation is estimated at 125 million dollars in cash.

Domain Namely Closing Scandal

According to an official Majordomo press release on June 14, 2006, GoDaddy suspended 1399 registered Majordomo domains on unwarranted spam charges. For domain unlocking, the company requested $199 for each domain.

According to the site https://web.archive.org/web/20110627205958/http://nodaddy.com/ (closed by GoDaddy), quite a large number of users suffered from GoDaddy’s policy to close the domain on an unverified complaint, offering an unlock for a certain amount.

A community of GoDaddy-affected users was also created - https://web.archive.org/web/20130428083454/http://gohelldaddy.com/. The domain is currently parked.

GoDaddy currently has a negative reputation on the Internet. On various websites, you can find a huge number of negative reviews, such as a company blocking accounts a few days after registering a domain, select domains and return money, require a passport photo and bank cards.

Selling a company's share to investment funds

On July 1, 2011, the company announced the attraction of investments through a partial sale to investment funds KKR & Co, Technology Crossover Ventures, Silver Lake Partners. The amount of the transaction was not announced, but experts say that we are talking about an amount of about $2 billion. Prior to the transaction, 78% of the company was controlled by its founder Bob Parsons, the rest through options were owned by top managers and some employees of the company. It is assumed that investment funds will not only make cash injections into the company, but also share their experience in foreign markets, and also help to modernize the technical component.

SOPA Support

In 2011, the company, among several other organizations, openly supported the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill, which caused a widespread protest movement. As a result of the proposed boycott of the company's services, which should have led it to abandon SOPA support, GoDaddy suffered significant losses, losing more than 72,000 domains in less than a week. In particular, the Wikimedia Foundation decided to change the service provider of delegation of its domains. Jimmy Wales announced the corresponding decision on his twitter. On December 23, senior management at GoDaddy announced that they “no longer support the SOPA bill”, soon replacing this statement with “GoDaddy VS SOPA”.

Attacks

On September 10, 2012, Go Daddy suffers the global fall of its services. First information assures that the group of hackers and cyber-activists Anonymous attributed the attack through their Twitter account where they mentioned: "By using / supporting Godaddy, you are supporting censorship of the Internet."

Awards and recognitions

Go Daddy is recognized for being a leading company in the information technology industry, in the web area. There are different publications that have awarded awards and distinctions to this company for the quality of its services, as well as for the generally positive opinions of its users. In 2012, Go Daddy was recognized as a Fortune 100 "Best Companies to Work for" company. It was selected for its excellent benefits, unique perks and diversity.

Sponsorship

The company started by sponsoring the 2005 Super Bowl, from 2009 sponsored pilot Danica Patrick at the IndyCar Series and Brad Keselowski at NASCAR, and sponsored Danica at NASCAR from 2012.