GoDaddy Purchased the Domain Name Market Today | Hacker News Reader

GoDaddy Purchased the Domain Name Market Today

kevinohashi.com

35 pointsohashi19 comments

GoDaddy is now the biggest player in the domain name sales channels both for new registrations and selling in the secondary market. With the upcoming release of new gTLDs, they couldn't be better positioned to sell more domain names and make more money.

The author's conclusion here is kind of obvious, but wow is he wrong in his sentiment that this is going to somehow be good for consumers. Because GoDaddy is private, its strategy to dominate by size and market share alone is kinda evil. How this company has managed to stay private for so long while getting so big and controlling so much bandwidth -- now this would be an interesting case study.

A lot of domainers don't use GoDaddy and don't want to put their domain names there. Acquiring Afternic solves the technical and business problems that may have blocked GoDaddy in previous attempts to gain more of the secondary market.

Hmm. So GoDaddy is trying to hide from itself?

Honestly, I am as shocked as you are about the positive conclusion. I try to put aside personal feelings when thinking about it from a business perspective. The downside here I think is going to be for domainers and competitors in the domain space. This move won't put other registrars out of business, there is plenty of competition to keep them price competitive, so consumers don't lose here. It does change the secondary market and make it easier to buy existing domains. I think that is a win. Right now, most deals involve emailing whois, escrow and other hassles. With AfternicDLS and major registrars on board, this could be eliminated and become as easy as going through check out. That's a win for consumers. Everything else I don't expect to see much change for them.

Does GoDaddy control that much bandwidth compared to some hosts like Hurriance Electric/OVH/Hetzner/etc?

Also GoDaddy was recently (past 5 years I think) bought by a private equity firm, so the owner cashed out via that rather than an IPO.

Bob Parsons is still the largest single share holder I believe. KKR, Silver Lake bought in for 2.25B.

Not sure on actual infrastructure size vs other companies since they are focused on small business market rather than being an infrastructure provider.

Based on a five year time line from KKR/Silver Lake, I would expect an IPO within 2-3 years. This recent change in leadership, direction, and acquisitions is evidence of the push toward IPO.

Maybe this time around it will actually happen. They tried to IPO in 2006 as well. I am guessing at this size there aren't many potential buyers considering their revenue was 1.3B last year. I think their growth might have slowed down a bit, not sure how/if that would affect a potential IPO.

I've got some gaps in years I could find data for:

2003 39M

2004 73M

2005 140M

2006

2007

2008 500M

2009 750M

2010

2011 1.14B

2012 1.3B

Growth has been around 15% this year, but it's expected to get up to 20% as various new marketing and internationalization strategies take place.

Can someone explain how this affect my searching for, purchasing, managing, and renewing domains on NameCheap?

I just didn't see it in the article, so I'm having trouble placing it in context.

It doesn't. But NameCheap is a drop in the bucket from an industry perspective. Take a look http://www.webhosting.info/registrars/top-registrars/global/

They have 32% of the market. WildWest is also GoDaddy (another 3% market). So They have 35% of the market. The next biggest (Enom) has 8% and really that's a split between them and NameCheap (NC had 3M in 2012).

GoDaddy is much bigger than anyone else on the consumer side. A lot of those competitors are focused on domain holders/resellers (Tucows, Enom, ResellerClub, Moniker).

Now they are going after the other side of the domain business. And they just secured the missing channel which comes with technology and distribution.

It won't affect consumers that much (my prediction), but it just positioned GoDaddy to dominate all the key aspects of the domain market.

I'm pretty sure that site's numbers are wrong. Try digging into the details on any registrar - the "gain/loss report" for GoDaddy, for example, says that they're registering and transferring in exactly -2560 domains every single week. (This is separate from the transfers out and deletions, so it should NEVER be negative.) Other registrars have similarly "quirky" numbers.

Can you potentially point me to a reliable source for this type of number (or tell me how to calculate it myself, assuming I can get the zone file from Verisign)?

I had similar issues with the data, and I tried emailing these guys to find out more about their methodology. Didn't get a response.

Are they crawling DNS for every domain that has changed info (or is new, or drops) from the prior zone file? How would one recreate this data, hypothetically?

EDIT: I'm aware of the ICANN delayed data (as the site below uses), but I am hoping for a more up-to-date source.

Here is a different source, very different numbers, but GoDaddy is just many times bigger than anyone else. They are also growing (in absolute terms) faster than anyone else.

http://www.registrarowl.com/report_registrar_total_domains.p...

News travels fast. We just got the email from the CEO today about the acquisition. However, I don't work in the domains group, so I don't have much additional information to share.

FWIW godaddy management is being run by ex-Microsoft people. CEO Irving was a VP at MS number of years ago.

Assuming facts not in evidence, etc., I don't see any indication that Afternic is "the domain market." Looking at the author's Tweets, on the other hand, illustrates their depth of knowledge quite effectively.

I am not making the argument that afternic is the entire domain market. I do believe it was/is the missing piece for GoDaddy owning both the consumer and secondary marketplaces and it will allow them to be the only company to put them together. Afternic's DLS system and the agreements with pretty much all the relevant registrars just made them a one stop shop for everyone on both sides of the domain market. With other parts of the business contracting and becoming irrelevant. They just pretty much sealed all the gaps I can imagine for the next few years. It also places them quite well for new gTLD introduction which should see a flurry of speculation and buying.

I am not making the argument that afternic is the entire domain market.

Your title is.

We'll have to agree to disagree on how it was meant then. They bought the DLS system which turned them into the dominant player on both sides of the market today by a large margin. They own the market now.

I'm not talking about how it was meant, I'm talking about the actual words. As a reader, "the Domain Name Market" is a singular term that refers to the entire sector of business and economy concerned with domain names. Amazon is the "dominant player" in online retail, but they do not own it, and someone who somehow acquired Amazon could never be said to have bought the online retail market unless you were writing clickbait.

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