I wonder if they have any logarithms that would attack this vulnerability? Someone could write a script to simply search several times for 1000's of names and bankrupt godaddy...
Their domain cost as a registrar is a fraction of retail pricing.
No it's not. GoDaddy has to pay the domain registry (verisign, donuts , etc) for the registration plus a small fee to ICANN. Domains are typically extremely low margin and profit is made up on add-ons.
It might be completely automated, but there could also be an algorithm that selects searched domain names and then puts them in a "review" shortlist for a human (or a team) to scan through and flag for purchase.
It doesn't cost them anything to do this. As a registrar they can register a domain name for free for seven days.
I assume you meant "algorithm", but I wouldn't call it that either.
Yes, you could try to exploit this to make them register a bunch of domains, but it costs them basically nothing, and you'd be rate limited/banned for the suspicious behavior long before it put a dent in their wallet.
Then I wonder what if someone trolls Godaddy by searching many names.