Done deal: KKR, Silver Lake & TCV now partial owners of Go Daddy - Largest domain name registrar gets big financial backing. GoDaddy is now (partly) private-equity owned. The company finally closed on its investment from KKR, Silver Lake and Technology Crossover Ventures today. Bob Parsons remains the single largest shareholder, which should assuage concerns of what can happen when a company is owned by investors only interested in the bottom line. With the closing Parsons is no longer CEO. He is now Executive Chairman Founder. ... read more ...

Tucows resumes batch buybacks, adult to 12.2% of superb shares - Company offers to buy up to 6.5 million shares of its stock. Tucows, which owns the world’s third largest domain name registrar, announced a Dutch auction tender offer to repurchase up to 6,500,000 shares of its common stock. That’s up to 12.2% of Tucows’ outstanding shares. The company has frequently bought back shares in its company as it feels it is the best use of cash right now. Tucows CEO Elliot Noss explained, “We continue to believe that the repurchase ... read more ...

Even CSC doesn’t make whois accuracy - Two months later Cocomo.com still has bogus whois information. You would think that a brand management intellectual property company would enforce whois accuracy on its customers. But apparently not. Two months ago I wrote about the sale of Cocomo.com for $33,000. The domain name had just been transferred to CSC (Corporation Service Company) with obviously bogus whois information: I submitted a whois inaccuracy report to ICANN. I assumed the registrant information ... read more ...

It’s go-time for .xxx as www.Buy.xxx commercials make a buzz - .XXX opens for registration today. At the time of writing the .xxx domain name launch is just two hours away and the internet is buzzing thanks to an aggressive TV ad campaign. The ads tell visitors to visit www.Buy.xxx, where you’ll find a list of accredited registrars who will sell you a .xxx domain name. But many of those registrars have already closed their queues for the first few hours of today’s launch. Some of them had a deadline of yesterday to pre-order ... read more ...

Where to find a cheapest .xxx domain pricing - .XXX domain names become available early next week. But you need to reserve now to get the good ones. If you want to register .xxx domain names then you better get your act together. General availability starts December 6. But to get the best domains you’ll need to pre-reserve them with a registrar. They will then submit the registration the moment the registry opens December 6. Many registrars have a pre-registration deadline of December 5. I expect lots of attention ... read more ...

National A-1 fights to redeem supports paid for stolen Walk.com domain name - Company blames domain name registrar that received proceeds of transaction in its bank account. National A-1, a large buyer of premium domain names, is fighting in court to recover $35,000 it paid to buy the Walk.com domain name. After it paid for the domain name it found out the name was stolen. According to National A-1’s complaint, it was contacted by the supposed owner of the domain name in April of this year. It struck a deal to purchase the domain for $35,000 ... read more ...

101Domain.com Suffers Securty Breach - 101Domain.com has apparently suffered a security breach which “may have resulted in unauthorized access to your personal information and possibly payment information.” According to Webhosting.info, 101domain.com has around 10,000 domain names under management. Here is the full message received by 101Domain.com customers: “We are writing to you as a primary contact on your account with 101domain.com. We need to make you aware of a security breach that may potentially have affected your account. We ... read more ...

Monte Cahn files third ammended censure opposite Oversee.net - 1, 2, 3, and now… Moniker founder Monte Cahn has filed a third amended complaint against his former employer Oversee.net. The third amended complaint (so that’s four in total) is in response to the judge dismissing several claims against Oversee.net and on Cahn’s depositions of current and former Oversee.net employees. He reinserts claims for accounting, fraud, and conversion. He essentially says that Oversee.net conspired from the beginning to not have to pay ... read more ...

GoDaddy to offer $5.00 .com domain names on Black Friday - Company repeats $5.00 offer starting this Friday. Domain Name Registrar GoDaddy.com will be offering $5.00 .com domain names starting on Black Friday and running through CyberMonday (the following Monday). The company ran a similar promotion last year. The deal appears to be an affiliate only offer, so I’m going to have to use an affiliate link to send you to it. The link will not give you the $5.00 price until Friday. The price does not include ICANN’s 18 cent ... read more ...

Oversee.net: We Don’t Owe Monte Cahn Anything for $13M Management Incentive Plan - Oversee.net requests summary judgment on claim it owes Moniker founder money under incentive plan. It’s been a busy week full of filings in the case of Monte Cahn v. Oversee.net. Monte is suing his former employer on a number of counts, including alleging that he’s owed money under a $13 million Management Incentive Plan (MIP). The most notable filing is Oversee.net’s request yesterday for summary judgment on Monte’s claim of breach of contract under the $13 ... read more ...

60 Days To Renew Your Domains Before Price Hikes - .Com prices jump 7% in January. Time is running out if you want to save money (or not spend more) on your .com and .net domain name renewals. VeriSign’s price hikes on its wholesale cost for the domains goes into effect January 15. The wholesale cost from VeriSign for .com domain names will increase from $7.34 to $7.85 and the registry fee for .net domain names will increase from $4.65 to $5.11. That doesn’t include ICANN’s 18 cent tax, which bumps the .com ... read more ...

Tucows Updates: Domains Now on GoDaddy, No Acquisitions Planned - Tucows’ own domain names available for instant transfer on GoDaddy. During Tucows’ investor conference call yesterday, company CEO Elliot Noss announced that the company had completed its technical integration with GoDaddy to sell its owned and operated domain names in the registration path. The deal is similar to one struck by NameMedia to list its owned and operated portfolio of domains on GoDaddy. When someone searches for a domain that is available for sale, ... read more ...

Court Grants Oversee.net Motion to Dismiss in Monte Cahn Lawsuit - Court grants Oversee.net’s Motion to Dismiss several claims brought by former employee Monte Cahn. A U.S. District Court has granted Oversee.net’s latest motion to dismiss in a lawsuit brought by former employee and Moniker founder Monte Cahn (pdf). Oversee.net had requested the court to dimiss a number of claims in Cahn’s second ammended complaint against the company. Oversee.net says the claims were merely rehashes of previous claims the court dismissed. With ... read more ...

Demand Media Demands Focus on Its Registrar Business - Stock investors need to pay less attention to Demand Media’s content business and more to its domain business. If you ask most stock watchers, they’ll tell you Demand Media is a content company. The company, they’ll say, relies on driving eyeballs to its ad laden pages. But underneath this is the truth: the “rock” of Demand Media is the domain name registrar and its huge portfolio of parked domain names. When it announced quarterly earnings yesterday, the ... read more ...

Where to Find a Cheapest .XXX Landrush Pricing - Comparison of .xxx landrush pricing. Just like I did for sunrise, I’ve compiled pricing for the .xxx landrush. The landrush period runs November 8-November 25. During this period adult companies can apply for any .xxx domain they want that wasn’t reserved during sunrise or blocked by the registry. If more than one company or person applies for the same domain it will be sent to an auction. There’s no benefit to applying early on in the period; it’s not first-come-first-served. Finding ... read more ...

Godaddy Claims To Have Invented “Private Domain Registrations” - In an article published in the azcentral.com, Godaddy.com is claiming they invented the idea of a “Private Domain Registrations.” “Go Daddy has vaulted to the top of the domain-registrar heap with the help of several innovations, perhaps the most significant among them being “private” domain registration.” “Go Daddy invented and launched the concept of private registration in 2002 with the formation of an affiliate company called Domains By Proxy Inc. It has been hugely successful, ... read more ...

SedoMLS Lands Moniker - Moniker customers can now list domains on Sedo’s distributed listing service. Moniker customers can now list their domain names for sale on the SedoMLS system, the two companies announced this morning. This is a big win for Sedo. Not only is it the biggest U.S. registrar to sign up for SedoMLS to date, but it’s also a key registrar in terms of inventory. Moniker has long been a domainer-centric domain registrar. Moniker is also integrated with Afternic’s premium ... read more ...

GoDaddy Premium Listings Back Up to 30% - Temporary 20% commission now back up to 30%. Go Daddy’s experimentation with commission rates for Premium Listings is over (at least for now). The commission charge is back to the original 30% on any new Premium listings or if you edit existing ones. For the past couple months the commission was reduced to 20% on any new listings or if you made changes to existing ones. Although 30% is the highest commission in the industry, the reach of Premium Listings is hard ... read more ...