The GoDaddy Group is a company based out of Scottsdale, AZ.  They were founded in 1997 under the name Jomax® Technologies by Bob Parsons. 

Here is an outline of their history.

1997  

  • Jomax® Technologies is founded by Bob Parsons.

1998  

  • Launch of custom Web site development services.

1999

  • Company is renamed Go Daddy Software®, Inc., and becomes known as Go Daddy.com®.
  • WebSite Complete®, one of the first do-it-yourself web site creation tools, is launched.   

2000  

  • Go Daddy Software® becomes an ICANN-accredited registrar.  It debuts its domain name registration services at 70% less than the industry leaders’ prices.

2001  

  • Go Daddy Software® becomes cash-flow profitable.
  • GoDaddy.com® is ranked the No. 1 registrar in net new domains registered, according to Name Intelligence, a domain name industry information organization that provides a variety of tools and utilities for monitoring the domain name industry.

2002  

  • Domains by Proxy™, Inc., a private domain registration company is formed, followed by the launch of private domain name registrations, a “first of its kind” service in the industry.
  • Wild West Domains®, Inc., a second ICANN-accredited registrar, is formed, followed by the launch of www.wildwestdomains.com, a reseller program which allows individuals and small businesses to sell Go Daddy’s products and services. 
  • For a second consecutive year, GoDaddy.com® is ranked the No. 1 registrar in net new domains registered, according to Name Intelligence. 

2003  

  • The Go Daddy® Group, a holding company, is formed. 
  • Starfield Technologies™, Inc., the research & development arm of The Go Daddy® Group, as well as its SSL Certificate Authority, is formed.
  • Blue Razor™ Domains, a third ICANN-accredited registrar, is formed, followed by the launch of www.bluerazor.com, a membership-based, volume discount registrar.
  • The Go Daddy® Group becomes the 3rd largest registrar in the world for domains under management.
  • For the third consecutive year, GoDaddy.com® is ranked the No. 1 registrar of net new domains registered, according to Name Intelligence.
  • GoDaddy.com® is ranked No. 92 on Deloitte Technology Fast 500, a nationwide ranking of public and private technology companies.
  • GoDaddy.com® is named the No. 1 Overall Best Registrar by Name Intelligence.
  • Go Daddy® becomes the first registrar to offer an online check payment option.
  • Go Daddy®  launches the following new products:
    • WebSite Tonight®, an online web site building product
    • c-Site®, federal copyright registration service
    • DomainAlert®, domain backordering service
    • Traffic Blazer®, a web site search engine submission and optimization tool
    • Spam Xploder, an anti-spam software

2004

  • For the fourth consecutive year, Go Daddy.com® is ranked the No. 1 registrar of net new domains registered, according to Name Intelligence.
  • The Go Daddy® Group becomes the 2nd largest registrar in the world in total domain names under management.
  • The Go Daddy® Group exceeds 2 million customers and 6 million total domains under management.
  • The Go Daddy® Group is ranked No. 35 on Deloitte Technology Fast 500, a nationwide ranking of public and private technology companies.
  • The Go Daddy® Group is ranked the fastest growing technology company (ranked # 8 overall) on the Inc. 500 List of America’s Fastest Growing Privately Held Companies.
  • Go Daddy® allows customers to purchase all of its products and services using PayPal’s global online payment service.
  • Go Daddy® is the only domain name registrar that owns its own root certificate and is one of only 8 companies to own a root certificate worldwide.
  • Go Daddy® is the first company to market with the ability to automatically provision and bind an SSL Certificate to a hosting account.
  • Go Daddy® is the only registrar awarded the WebTrust Seal of Assurance for its SSL Certificates.  The WebTrust Seal of Assurance guarantees Go Daddy® has met or exceeded standards in the areas of privacy, security, business practices/transaction integrity, availability and confidentiality.  It is issued by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants.
  • Go Daddy® launches the following new products:

 

    • Express Email Marketing™, eMarketing software that is 100% compliant with the anti-Spam laws.

 

    • OnLine File Folder, an online file security and storage application.

 

    • SSL Certificates, providing 128-bit encryption and security for online transactions.

 

    • Wildcard SSL Certificates for sub-domains.

 

    • SuperReseller, a program which allows businesses and individuals to sell the Wild West Domains® reseller program.

 

    • Quick Shopping Cart™, an Internet-based store-building tool that assists business in reaching a worldwide e-commerce customer base through the development of comprehensive Web storefronts from which to sell products online.
  • The Go Daddy® Group becomes a recognized industry leader in the fight against phishing, joining the Anti-Phishing Working Group. The Go Daddy® Group develops and deploys a tool that identifies phishing emails upon receipt and destroys them before delivery to the end user’s email box.
  • Go Daddy® is the only registrar that is a founding member of ENUM LLC, a partnership of leading telecommunications companies which will build a public infrastructure that converges the Internet and the Phone Switched Telephone Network technologies. 
  • Bob Parsons, president & founder of The Go Daddy® Group, debuts an atypical CEO blog, www.bobparsons.com.

 

2005

  • GoDaddy.com® becomes the No. 1 registrar of domains under management.
  • GoDaddy.com® becomes the undisputed No. 1 registrar worldwide, both in terms of domains under management and new domain registrations.
  • Go Daddy® launches a wide-ranging traditional media advertising campaign that includes television, print and radio venues. 

·         Go Daddy.com® debuts its first-ever television ad on Super Bowl XXXIX.

·         Go Daddy.com’s® Super Bowl ad receives the largest “Share of Voice” (“SOV”) attributed to any Super Bowl advertiser during the past two years, and possibly ever, according to multivision, inc., a leader in the collection and analysis of real-time broadcast corporate intelligence.  SOV is the percentage of times an advertiser is mentioned in all Super Bowl stories aired on national, cable and the top 50 local television networks.  (For example, if there are ten stories and a company is mentioned three times, its’ SOV is 30%).

  • Go Daddy® launches the following new products:

 

    • Dedicated and virtual dedicated web site hosting services.
    • Fax Thru Email™
    • Online Group Calendar,
    • The Domain Name After Market™
    • Real Simple Syndication (“RSS”) feeds

·         Go Daddy® wins the “Users’ Choice Award” from Name Intelligence, an award signifying a loyal and satisfied customer base. 

·         Bob Parsons’ blog, www.bobparsons.com, becomes the 23rd most popular self-authored, dedicated blog site on the Internet, out of 11 million+ blogs worldwide.

·         Go Daddy® provides Turbo SSL Certificates to bona-fide open source software projects, free of charge.

·         GoDaddy.com® becomes the 3rd largest shared hosting provider worldwide, according to Netcraft, LTD (www.netcraft.com) a globally respected authority on market share for hosting, encrypted transactions, e-commerce and more. 

·         The Go Daddy® Group becomes the 4th largest group provider of Secure Certificates worldwide, according to Netcraft, and less than one year after entering the market.

·         Go Daddy® opens its third call center in Gilbert, AZ. 

Go Daddy® launches Radio Go Daddy™

 

Domain Registration is the most important industry The GoDaddy Group competes in.  They sell the domains via an online website interface.  The Customer goes to a website where they can choose a domain name and if it is not already in use then they can submit to be the owner of the domain.  The company is using a cost-leadership marketing strategy.  The company’s financial strategy is financing through operational cash flow.  The company is virtually debt free aside from one building purchase.  The company’s operations strategy is to compete on price not on additional products.  Currently there are literally hundreds of domain registrars.  GoDaddy does not offer a unique product in this industry.  It does however offer low cost with superior support.  Like in the Wal-Mart strategy of low cost for a high quality item GoDaddy too has found a market niche.  GoDaddy flows the beat of a new drum where anyone, including your average Joe, small, medium, and large businesses can all purchase the same type of product at the same price.  GoDaddy clearly is using a cost leadership
strategy. 

 

Bob Parsons the owner of The GoDaddy group which includes GoDaddy.com had this to say in regards to their business model:

“Go Daddy is -- first and foremost -- a domain name registrar. With, one minor exception (Plesk control panel), we do develop every product we sell. In order for us to develop a product it must enable the use of a domain name. When Go Daddy became a registrar in November 2000 Go Daddy’s .COM domain name prices were $8.95 for one year.  Today, Go Daddy’s .COM prices are still $8.95 for one year. This compares to Network Solutions' (the old leader of the industry) one year rate of $34.99.”  As GoDaddy has just surpassed the industry competition as the Number 1 domain registrar for .com domains as it holds over 8 million names under management.

 

GoDaddy.com and the GoDaddy group compete in the following industries:

  1. Domains
  2. Domain registration
  3. Domain transfers
  4. Domain privacy
  5. Domain back orders and even Domain reselling
  6. Hosting
  7. Hosting services
  8. Shared, virtual dedicated and dedicated
  9. Statistics software
  10. Dedicated IP addresses
  11. Online file transfers
  12. File encryption software
  13. Email
  14. Email services
  15. Email packages
  16. Faxing services
  17. Email marketing services
  18. Online group calendar
  19. Other
  20. Merchant services
  21. Merchant accounts
  22. eCommerce solutions
  23. Copyright submission services
  24.  
  25. reseller options for most products and services

All of these products and services are related to having a website presence.  All these items work together online in giving the customer a unique web presence that can create profit, communicate ideas, and share information.  The diversification strategy is centered on customer response to new product and service releases.  Their latest one is TDNAM (The Domain Name After Market) where they are auctioning off domain names that someone has registered and/or was repossessed for various reasons.  Currently there are 97,462 domains in this newest diversification area.  Currently GoDaddy (like Microsoft) has made sure their products work well with each other in that they compliment each other with their functions and features.   Typically for someone to have a site up and running they need a domain, hosting space, and either a good knowledge of website coding, or a software package in which to create the site.  GoDaddy has products and services such as WST (Website Tonight) and WSC (Website Complete) for building the website and WST comes with hosting.  However, the purchase of the domain is separate and there is an opportunity for GoDaddy to offer the sale of the domain name after the purchase of these software packages, but they are not capitalizing on it, yet.  GoDaddy has a completely different corporate strategy, first off it is not public (yet as Bob Parsons states), and it runs mainly off of operation cash flow (i.e. net profits).  GoDaddy rarely takes on debt, and in doing so keeps at a large profit.  The GoDaddy Group consists of GoDaddy.com, Wild West Domains, Starfield Technologies Inc., Blue Razor Domains Inc., and Domains by Proxy.  As these companies are complementary of each other and they all server to increase the value of their core product I believe they would not be as profitable separated at this time.  For example the company Wild West Domains is a reseller program for people who would like to resell domain registration on the Internet.  They sign up with Wild west Domains and all they do is the marketing and promotion Wild West Domains handles the support, the filing of the purchased domains and supports any other ancillary products the reseller wishes to market.  If separated Wild West Domains would be competing with GoDaddy and other large scale domain registrars directly.  This would pull sales and organizational structure support from Wild West Domains and in doing so may destroy it all together. 

 

 

 

 

Citations

 

http://www.verisign.com/Resources/Naming_Services_Resources/Domain_Name_Industry_Brief/

http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/print.php/3500651

 

http://www.icannreport.com/

 

http://www.dailychanges.com/