

Go Daddy said to be near $2B+ sale to K.K.R. and Silver Lake - jonknee
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/06/24/go-daddy-nears-sale-to-k-k-r-and-silver-lake/?hp

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jeffreymcmanus
Oh, Silver Lake, the private equity firm that apparently screwed Skype
employees out of their stock options! I think these guys deserve each other.

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jbwyme
GoDaddy is the armpit of the tech industry. It preys on uneducated users
(generally "business" people), sells with sex, and offers mediocre products at
best - and even that is quite liberal. It just goes to show you how important
marketing is.

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icey
Everyone knows that GoDaddy isn't a great company (including the small
business owners that use them); it's interesting that they don't have a strong
direct competitor. There are many registrars, but none that have nearly the
level of traction that GoDaddy has.

Seems like an opportunity for some company to be the Zappos / Southwest /
Amazon of domain registration - easy to use, no-frills, low-cost, excellent
customer service. I wonder why that company isn't out there yet.

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jbwyme
_Everyone knows that GoDaddy isn't a great company (including the small
business owners that use them)_

I have had previous employers force me to move us off of GMail to GoDaddy
email because they thought "Gmail sucks".

People also continue to host with GoDaddy (which I do not believe to be in
order to save $10-$15 per month) even after I have showed them better
alternatives from a performance aspect.

I agree with you that there is an opportunity in the market but as I stated in
my original post I think GoDaddy preys on the uneducated who believe the most
popular/largest ad budget is certainly the best option.

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icey
It's probably a futile exercise in semantics, but I believe that there is a
difference between opining that GoDaddy is the best option currently available
and thinking they're a great company.

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mgl
I think we all agree that GoDaddy is a hosting company for the masses, but..
what's wrong with that? The money is out there for someone who will create a
better, cleaner, more pleasant GoDaddy.

There is still plenty of small business owners lost somewhere in the google
search results that would love to get a decent website, affortable SEO
services and "all that jazz" resulting in more customers coming to use their
service/product.

If someone would create such Hosting Groupon that will offer a simple package
combined of domain registration, 5 MB hosting, simple CMS + variety of themes
and basic SEO services, all that with techie-wording cut off from the message
and sold by direct calls just like Groupon does, there seem to be a nice
market waiting for him or her.

Really, GoDaddy is still pretty technical in their message, and regular
customers do not want just "a domain", they want to make their business
present in the internet and it should be up to you to get this done right
practically.

