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GoDaddy to introduce Buy Now lander for aftermarket domains

by — Domain Sales 13 Comments

Lander will be in addition to current “request price” landers.

Image of GoDaddy "buy now" lander

GoDaddy’s new “Buy Now” lander.

GoDaddy is introducing a “Buy Now” lander for domain name sales after many requests from the domain investment community.

The company is currently testing the landers. GoDaddy will test the landers on its own NameFind inventory before opening them to all domain investors.

The landers include a “buy now” link as well as phone numbers for potential buyers who want to speak to a representative over the phone. It also emphasizes GoDaddy’s brand to great confidence, including a large message that reads: “Buy with confidence with GoDaddy”.

Domain investors have been asking for these landers for a long time, with a goal of leveraging GoDaddy’s trust and name recognization with customers to increase sales.

GoDaddy explains AR15 .com boot

by — Domain Registrars 46 Comments

Company says it asked the site to remove content that incited violence before telling it to find another domain name registrar.

Screenshot of AR15.com saying that it was deplatformed

AR15 .com says it was kicked off GoDaddy without warning. GoDaddy disputes this.

Last week, gun site and forum AR15 .com said it was “de-platformed” by GoDaddy. It claimed that GoDaddy didn’t tell it which content violated its terms, and informed it that the decision was final and it was given no way to appeal:

GoDaddy released a statement explaining that it provided a specific warning to AR15 .com, and the site did not take action to address it:

Why did GoDaddy suspend services to AR15.com?

On January 8, we received a complaint regarding certain content on AR15.com. Per our policy, our team investigated the content in question and confirmed it violated our terms of service because it incited violence. On that same day, we notified AR15.com that they had 24 hours to remove the content, or their domain name would be suspended. AR15.com responded that the content had been removed, yet when we checked to confirm, the site showed the content still live. Accordingly, we suspended services on January 11.

Although we informed AR15.com they had 24 hours to take action, we actually provided them with 53 hours to remove the content. Again, because the content was not removed, we followed our terms of service and suspended services to AR15.com.

Does GoDaddy plan to take the same action with other gun sites?

GoDaddy supports a free and open Internet. We do not take action on complaints that would constitute censorship of content that represents the exercise of freedom of speech and expression on the Internet. In instances where a site goes beyond the mere exercise of these freedoms, however, and crosses over to promoting, encouraging, or otherwise engaging in violence, as was the case with AR15.com, we will take action.

This is the same rationale the company provided when it told DailyStormer to find a new registrar in 2017 after the violence in Charlottesville. GoDaddy took a lot of heat leading up to that point. It was a bit squishy in that case — it seemed that GoDaddy suggested the content on the site could lead to violence, even if it didn’t directly call for it.

AR15 .com moved its domain name to Epik.

Latest .com ranking has some surprises

by — Domain Registrars 0 Comments

Two registrars posted big gains in September.

The words "top 10 domain registrars" in purple and yellow text

ICANN has published the latest official data from Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) about the .com namespace. This registrar-by-registrar report covers September 2020.

There were a couple of surprises in the monthly numbers. Perhaps they are anomalies. First, Hosting Concepts/OpenProvider had a surge in one-year .com registrations, placing it in the top ten. Second, United Internet’s PSI brand posted a surge that doubled the overall company’s .com registrations compared to the prior month.

CentralNic’s brands continue to grow, and I’ll add them as a combined entity starting next month.

Here’s how registrars did in terms of new .com registrations in September:

1. GoDaddy.com* (NYSE: GDDY) 914,038 (970,570 in August)
2. Namecheap Inc. 284,154 (276,557)
3. Tucows** (NASDAQ:TCX) 231,791 (245,360)
4. Endurance+ (NASDAQ: EIGI) 178,499 (199,710)
5. Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) 157,453 (168,619)
6. Alibaba (HiChina) 155,926 (221,686)
7. United Internet^ 142,553 (70,580)
8. Hosting Concepts B.V. d/b/a Openprovider 101,645
9. Wix (NASDAQ: WIX) 97,021 (108,029)
10. NameSilo (CSE:URL) 71,291 (68,308)

Here’s the leaderboard of the top registrars in terms of total .com registrations under management as of the end of September 2020.

1. GoDaddy* 54,450,745 (54,215,433 in August)
2. Tucows** 12,963,637 (12,930,920)
3. Endurance+ 7,232,301 (7,183,871)
4. Web.com++ 7,066,244 (7,041,224)
5. Namecheap 6,516,860 (6,338,718)
6. Alibaba 5,947,947 (5,962,510)
7. United Internet^ 5,639,402 (5,554,345)
8. Google 3,924,273 (3,846,200)
9. Xin Net Technology Corporation 2,244,819 (2,539,828)
10. GMO 2,191,732 (2,212,268)

Many domain companies have multiple accreditations and I’ve tried to capture the largest ones. See the notes below.

* Includes GoDaddy, Wild West Domains, Uniregistry and 123 Reg
** Includes Tucows, Enom, Ascio and EPAG
+ Includes PDR, Domain.com, FastDomain and Bigrock. There are other Endurance registrars, but these are the biggest.
++ Includes Network Solutions, Register.com, and Crazy Domains/Dreamscape
^ Includes 1&1, PSI, Cronon, United-Domains, Arsys and world4you

Epik continues to bash GoDaddy. GoDaddy says this is why it dropped Epik

by — Domain Registrars 39 Comments

Epik suggests reasons why GoDaddy might have dropped Epik from its Afternic program, and GoDaddy responds.

Logo for Epik domain name company

When PayPal notified Epik in October that it was terminating its services with the domain name registrar, Epik fired off letters blaming a number of organizations for the move. One of the companies that drew its ire was GoDaddy. Epik published attacks against the domain name registrar and provided contact information for many of its employees.

The next month, GoDaddy terminated its Afternic partnership with Epik, apparently catching Epik by surprise.

Epik went public about the termination, apparently violating the contract it signed with GoDaddy in doing so. Epik seemed to tie GoDaddy’s decision to a number of factors, and oddly questioned receiving GoDaddy’s letter “two hours after the election was called for Joe Biden.”

Yesterday, Epik published another letter about the Afternic termination. It argued that one of the factors leading to the termination was that Epik was reporting security issues with the platform.

I reached out to GoDaddy yesterday to see if the company would provide any information about its decision to terminate the partnership with Epik.

Paul Nicks, GoDaddy VP, Domains – Investors and Corporate, issued this statement in response:

Once again, Epik has lobbed baseless accusations against us. To be crystal clear, Epik has not provided us with reports of “repeated Afternic security issues.” If anyone has any concerns about our systems, we work closely with them to answer any questions or resolve issues. This is how a real partnership works.

The reason Epik was dropped has everything to do with their constant attacking of us. We don’t feel the need to partner with someone who time and time again casually lies about a wide variety of issues.

We will not be providing further statements on their business, and reserve the right to explore any and all possible legal options to defend against their baseless claims.

The scariest thing about that GoDaddy phishing test story

by — Domain Registrars 27 Comments

A lot of employees apparently fell for it.

Image representing email phishing

GoDaddy has been taking a lot of heat for a phishing test email it sent to many of its employees right before the holidays.

The email told recipients that they were receiving a $650 holiday bonus and asked them to click a link in order to receive the bonus.

The bonus wasn’t real. It was a test to see if employees would fall for a phishing attack.

I understand why some employees are upset about the test. But I’m more concerned that 500 people reportedly failed the test.

I’m not sure what “failing” means here. Does that just mean they clicked the link? Or did they divulge passwords?

Regardless, that’s a lot of people failing a test in a company of about 7,000. (That assumes everyone received the test email, too.)

I suspect fewer people would have been duped if they were in an office setting rather than working from home. Word would have quickly spread around the call centers, “don’t click that link!”

But it’s clear that GoDaddy needs to continue to educate and test its employees. It holds the keys to valuable assets and people are trying to steal them or trick GoDaddy employees into making critical changes.

Former GoDaddy employee Tony Perez, who sold his company Securi to GoDaddy, opined:

Hurt feelings aside, I hope GoDaddy continues to run these tests until it’s unable to dupe any of its employees.

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