Richard Merdinger tells the WHIR that Go Daddy has withdrawn its new gTLD applications to focus on relationships with registries and the needs of its customers
Go Daddy announced on Wednesday that it has rescinded two of its new gTLD applications, .home and .casa, in order to focus on providing non-competitive services to its registry partners.
The announcement comes out of Go Daddy Registry Days, its meeting in Phoenix with new gTLD applicants. Go Daddy says the meeting with new gTLD applicants will help it establish and extend relationships, and ensure that it is “shepherding the industry in a way that’s beneficial” to its customers, who are largely SMBs.
“Go Daddy is generally known as a domains company and a hosting company and has many products that support the small to medium business, by being registry or TLD agnostic Go Daddy is going to be focusing on the benefit of the individual TLDs for our customers,” Richard Merdinger, Go Daddy vice president of product development, domains says. “If a customer comes through our website looking for an online identity, we have found new and innovative ways that we are going to help that the customer find the appropriate identity regardless of the backend provider of that domain. We’re really here for an advocate for our customer and a retailer for the many domain names that we’re looking at.”
As Go Daddy focuses on providing a holistic experience for its SMB customers, its move will help customers consider TLD consistently across providers, instead of being confused by all the different nuances, Merdinger says.
“We bring to the industry a unique level of experience and expertise in dealing with high volume registration and a high diversity of domain names,” he says.
Go Daddy is still going ahead with its new gTLD application for .godaddy, and will use the brand TLD for its own products.
“[.GoDaddy] illustrates our understanding and endorsement of the new gTLDs as a program but does it in a way that is not competitive with the registries,” he says.
There are 19 new gTLD applications that have been withdrawn, including .ketchup and .transformers.
Talk back: What do you think of Go Daddy’s new gTLD application withdrawal? Are you attending Go Daddy Registry Days? Let us know in a comment.
About Nicole Henderson
Nicole Henderson is the Editor in Chief of the Web Host Industry Review where she covers daily news and features online, as well as in print. She has a bachelor of journalism from Ryerson University in Toronto. You can find her on Twitter @NicoleHenderson.
