GoDaddy announced it is acquiring Neustar’s registry business, which oversees top level domains such as .biz, .co, .in, .nyc and .us. This puts GoDaddy in charge of those domains.
Moving forward, all domain name registrars will pay GoDaddy the wholesale price for registering those domains for their customers.
The new business will be called GoDaddy Registry. GoDaddy Registry pledged to keep their domain name registration business separate from the new GoDaddy Registry, presumably to prevent any unfair advantages.
According to GoDaddy’s announcement:
“As part of the transaction, GoDaddy will strictly adhere to a governance model that maintains independence between the GoDaddy registry and registrar businesses.”
The intention is for the Registry side to operate as a relatively autonomous independent business.
Managed Registry Services
The acquisition includes Neustar’s Managed Registry Services business that manages the over two hundred additional top level domains such as brand TLDs and generic TLDs.
A managed registry service can help a brand navigate the creation of a brand top level domain name and to manage it, including legal and regulatory obligations to the organization that administers domain names and IP addresses, The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
Thus a part of this Managed Registry Services business is Malicious Activity Management in order to satisfy ICANN requirements to not host malicious activities such a malware and botnets.
Some Publishers are Wary of GoDaddy
GoDaddy positions itself as helping small businesses innovate. Over the years GoDaddy has acquired detractors for a variety of reasons. One example that I recall is a publisher complaining that GoDaddy put their entire account on hold because GoDaddy received complaints about link building emails. In order to regain access to the domains the publisher had to pay a deposit.
Over on WebmasterWorld this was a typical comment:
“If GoDaddy were to go anywhere near my main registrar I’d moved everything immediately, period!”
Another forum member criticized GoDaddy’s customer help:
“Only thing I’d say about GoDaddy is their support is geared for the masses, 48-hour turnaround style and low-level tech support which involves perseverance if not a simple problem. ”
GoDaddy is a big company that is able to accomplish things at scale. This acquisition makes sense because it perfectly aligns with GoDaddy’s existing business model.
Read GoDaddy’s announcement:
GoDaddy Acquires Neustar’s Registry Business
