ICANN Backs up the GoDaddy RegisterFly Transfer Arrangement

We reported earlier this week that Go Daddy had put together an agreement to take over the management of domains registered at RegisterFly - most specifically for the reason of returning control of those domains to the customers that registered them.

This is, of course, good news for RegisterFly customers, many of whom have been unable to manage or renew their domains for the better part of a year.

Presumably it’s good news for Go Daddy too. While I don’t doubt the general goodwill involved in the company’s effort to repair the situation, moving 850,000 domains on to the company’s network for no immediate financial gain is probably less of a burden for Go Daddy than a it might at first appear, considering the fact that Go Daddy’s business model generally sees the company acquire domain customers at a slight loss and make that money back by selling services (like Web hosting) to those domain customers.

Hospitably, Go Daddy has set up a relatively simple welcome page for RegisterFly customers, with a bit of information and a

As we also have reported, RegisterFly had been seemingly en route to collapse for some time, and is the target of a class action lawsuit blaming the company for lost domains and lost revenues, among other things.

Yesterday, ICANN sent a press release officially endorsing Go Daddy’s solution to the RegisterFly issue. The release offered comment from ICANN president and CEO Dr. Paul Twomey on the issue:

"The RegisterFly situation has been extremely difficult - first and foremost for registrants, as well as for the entire registry and registrar community."

True. And ICANN, which is singled out in the aforementioned class action suit as failing to handle the RegisterFly situation quickly or effectively, is happy to have a solution it can get behind.

Twomey, in the press release, says:

"ICANN had been actively seeking participants to act as a transfer provider to bulk transfer RegisterFly records to another accredited registrar. We have ended that process because the GoDaddy.com agreement is a better solution for RegisterFly customers since it's a direct and automatic transfer to a competent and experienced customer service oriented organization."

Twomey says companies had commendably volunteered to take part in the transfer program ICANN was developing. He also mentions that Afilias and VeriSign had waived considerable fees to make the transfer work, and that Tucows was active in helping to pursue a solution.