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This proves nothing. They say they aren't front running and never have, and yet how many times have people looked up a domain on GoDaddy only to have it regist

This proves nothing. They say they aren't front running and never have, and yet how many times have people looked up a domain on GoDaddy only to have it registered minutes or hours later by a GoDaddy account. That doesn't mean that GoDaddy itself is doing this, but their employees certainly could be, or they could sell domain query data to a 3rd party to keep their hands clean. Some Godaddy employees certainly have access to the data of who is looking for what. It would not be hard at all to have an algorithm that looks that those domains for dictionary words and possibly look at Google keyword search volume on each one and only buy the ones that pass some minimum criteria. That would be smarter than Network Solutions and harder to prove. I personally stopped doing domain lookups on GoDaddy because they would register domains I didn't pull the trigger on fast enough and I've been moving domains away from them as well. Just because some VP says they don't do it doesn't mean they aren't lying or there isn't some low level tech or manager who isn't doing this on their own.

shell0x 14y ago
I agree with you. I would say the same if I would do domain name front running. Who wouldn't lie in this situation? But there are more reasons for avoiding godaddy. Their CEO kills elephants, they had an important role in designing the SOPA bill(and moved back then) and they are expensive. I would recommend gandi.net or inwx(InternetworX) instead.
- dangrossman 14y ago
  Gandi has the unique contract term where they can take your domain if you violate their "ethical code" or "fail to facilitate the fight against deviant use of the Internet"... which is pretty much a blanket right to revoke your domain at any time if you host user-generated content, among other things. http://www.gandi.net/static/contracts/en/g2/pdf/MSA-1.2-EN.pdf http://www.gandi.net/static/contracts/en/g2/pdf/MSA-1.2-EN.p... I'd avoid that. NameCheap has a history of standing on the side of its customers' rights. They're my current choice.
  - shell0x 14y ago
    Well, but I thought it isn't wise to use an US registrar today, because it's easier for the US feds to seize a domain?
    - dangrossman 14y ago
      It does not matter what registrar you use if the TLD is managed by a US registry (.com, .net, .org, .name, .cc, etc). The government goes straight to the registry, not to your registrar, to change the records. Gandi would have no power to stop that.
      - shell0x 14y ago
        Well thats true as well. I think the best choices for TLD's are .is, .ch/.li and .eu. However, .is is quite expensive(39 euro).
gghootch 14y ago
This phenomenon is disgusting. Happened to me for a thirteen-letter domain name with fairly low search popularity. I presumed this was one of the reasons why Godaddy is considered evil. Nowadays the domain is parked @ domainbrokers.com If a 3rd party is involved, shouldn't we move to stop Godaddy from providing this information to them? If it is a case of rogue employees domain squatting, shouldn't Godaddy act to put a halt to this practice?
- vijayr 14y ago
  This is disgusting, but everything is fair in love, war and business :( I don't think any domain registrar will willingly not do it. There should be some kind of law, that makes this practice illegal - both the registrar doing it themselves, and giving the data to others so they could do it. In fact, there should be a law prohibiting the sale, sharing or even saving of this data completely. If I search for a domain at a registrar's site, that shouldn't be logged anywhere. Not directly related, but - it would be nice if there is a law that says "any domain name can be sold only for a maximum of 10 dollars" - that would prevent the disgusting domain squatters. It would upset those who spent millions already, but it might have some affect on the future squatting of domains.
  - saraid216 14y ago
    > This is disgusting, but everything is fair in love, war and business :( Um, no. That's not true. Sending armed men into your competitor's retail store to trash the place and scare off customers is not "fair". This is also why, among other reasons, it's illegal.
  - wpietri 14y ago
    No, everything is not fair in business. Commerce is one of the many mechanisms by which we collaborate in making a better world. If you have found a way to abuse that mechanism to enrich yourself at the expense of others, then you're an asshole. That you can get away with something for a while does not make it right, and it does not make you less of an asshole. Indeed, I'd say that finding a new way to fuck people over, and therefore forcing the creation of a new regulatory apparatus that burdens us all, makes you more of an asshole.
matznerd 14y ago
Godaddy definitely does this, if not directly, they also can suggest the domain you've search to other people searching because it is likely a good domain...
- JoeCortopassi 14y ago
  It's the reason why I just use `whois domainiamsearching.com` from the command line whenever I look up domains I'm interested in. Way quicker than the web based look up, as well as not having to worry about some third party (or your isp) trying to snake a domain out from under you
  - larrys 14y ago
    For .com and .net names using the above method Verisign GRS has access to that info. There is nothing to prevent whois.verisign-grs.net (or the others they operate) from logging your request -or- from someone sniffing it by other means (it's plaintext after all).
    - uxp 14y ago
      Someone sniffing my line, while is of much greater concern, is also much less likely to occur. GoDaddy (or any other whois website frontend for that matter) automating registrations if a whois lookup purchase isn't made immediately is much more likely, purely on a practical level.
ErikHuisman 14y ago
Indeed, this proves nothing! Godaddy does millions of domain registrations a year. Imagine how many lookups they do in a single day. Just by sheer change it will happen often a domain is registered by somebody shortly after a someone else did a lookup. There's no proof either way.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
  The trick would be to search for a bunch of random, long, very undesirable domains, to see if it's automated. Of course, if it's manual, it won't prove it.
incision 14y ago
It's hard for me to put anything past Godaddy. I was taken aback when a domain I owned expired and Godaddy "held it for me" to the tune of $80. I just waited a few months and re-registered after they dropped it.
shawnee_ 14y ago
Some Godaddy employees certainly have access to the data of who is looking for what This is scary for many reasons. Although it barely made a bleep on HN, GoDaddy recently acquired Outright.com Once upon a time, Outright had a great vision. To be like Mint, but for small businesses. For "the little guy". People sign up, plug in their bank account info, credit cards, eBay + PayPal, etc and voila! Here's your P&L. Makes doing taxes easy. Customers? Generally of the unsuspecting "lifestyle business", sole prop, a person / family business kind that just didn't know any better. Over time, Outright's servers became chock full of data (yes, even from deleted accounts), such that it could paint a live stream of a person's or a business's financial health. This would be fine and dandy but for the fact that Outright was taken over by an incredibly unethical and morally incomprehensible CEO who, apparently, decided to sell out all of his users' privacy and security to one of his kind. So GoDaddy is now in the business of "accounting" and has access to the live stream of financial health of a whole lotta small businesses - to exploit and do who knows what with.
- Osiris 14y ago
  Which CEO are you referring to? There's been a few changes over the past year.
jseliger 14y ago
GoDaddy has certainly been caught doing nasty things before, as explained in "GoDaddy goes to great lengths to hide its expired domain warehousing operations": http://domainnamewire.com/2008/12/03/standard-tactics-llc-how-godaddy-profits-from-expired-domains/ http://domainnamewire.com/2008/12/03/standard-tactics-llc-ho... . Only the company's IPO revealed its internal structure.
Osiris 14y ago
Is it possible that it's someone else registering the domain but using GoDaddy's privacy package to hide their registration details? I think it's domains by proxy or something along those lines. Also, for every registration don't registrars have to pay the ICANN fees for each domain? At almost $10/domain it would seem unwise to automatically register any domain people are searching for as it could end up costing a lot of money in fees. Disclosure: I work at GoDaddy, but I do not work on domains, so I have no knowledge about that area of the business.
larrys 14y ago
Note: I own registrar and we are a competitor of godaddy. That said a few points: 1) As others have pointed out the sheer volume of domain lookups that are done at godaddy make it unlikely this would be profitable for GD to do not to mention the PR problem for that matter. Registrars do pay for domain names. Currently the cost (including ICANN fees) are $8.03 per domain (plus some other minor type costs as well). All registrars pay the same price .com .net, volume doesn't matter. Very often registrars sell below cost btw. 2) "but their employees certainly could be, or they could sell domain query data to a 3rd party to keep their hands clean. Some Godaddy employees certainly have access to the data of who is looking for what." Is possible of course. So far no proof of that. Important point of course is that even the info (as I pointed out in another comment) when you do a command line whois to the Verisign whois server can be sniffed and/or it's possible someone at Verisign is getting at the data (or that Verisign is selling it for that matter). Since GD is the largest registrar it is quite possible the info is sniffed elsewhere and registered at GD. 3) "algorithm that looks that those domains for dictionary words and possibly look at Google keyword search volume on each one and only buy the ones that pass some minimum criteria" Exactly the way back in the 90's that I registered domain names. Except it was by excite or yahoo I don't remember. I can vouch for that personally although most good names as we know are taken long ago. 4) "or there isn't some low level tech or manager who isn't doing this on their own." Then the culprit isn't GD but someone who works for them (in all fairness). So this could easily happen at any registrar. It is possible to setup a system where a rogue employee can't get at the data of course. But that doesn't prevent what can happen as detailed in #2 above.

shell0x 14y ago

I agree with you. I would say the same if I would do domain name front running. Who wouldn't lie in this situation? But there are more reasons for avoiding godaddy. Their CEO kills elephants, they had an important role in designing the SOPA bill(and moved back then) and they are expensive. I would recommend gandi.net or inwx(InternetworX) instead.

dangrossman 14y ago
Gandi has the unique contract term where they can take your domain if you violate their "ethical code" or "fail to facilitate the fight against deviant use of the Internet"... which is pretty much a blanket right to revoke your domain at any time if you host user-generated content, among other things. http://www.gandi.net/static/contracts/en/g2/pdf/MSA-1.2-EN.pdf http://www.gandi.net/static/contracts/en/g2/pdf/MSA-1.2-EN.p... I'd avoid that. NameCheap has a history of standing on the side of its customers' rights. They're my current choice.
- shell0x 14y ago
  Well, but I thought it isn't wise to use an US registrar today, because it's easier for the US feds to seize a domain?
  - dangrossman 14y ago
    It does not matter what registrar you use if the TLD is managed by a US registry (.com, .net, .org, .name, .cc, etc). The government goes straight to the registry, not to your registrar, to change the records. Gandi would have no power to stop that.
    - shell0x 14y ago
      Well thats true as well. I think the best choices for TLD's are .is, .ch/.li and .eu. However, .is is quite expensive(39 euro).

gghootch 14y ago

This phenomenon is disgusting. Happened to me for a thirteen-letter domain name with fairly low search popularity. I presumed this was one of the reasons why Godaddy is considered evil. Nowadays the domain is parked @ domainbrokers.com If a 3rd party is involved, shouldn't we move to stop Godaddy from providing this information to them? If it is a case of rogue employees domain squatting, shouldn't Godaddy act to put a halt to this practice?

vijayr 14y ago
This is disgusting, but everything is fair in love, war and business :( I don't think any domain registrar will willingly not do it. There should be some kind of law, that makes this practice illegal - both the registrar doing it themselves, and giving the data to others so they could do it. In fact, there should be a law prohibiting the sale, sharing or even saving of this data completely. If I search for a domain at a registrar's site, that shouldn't be logged anywhere. Not directly related, but - it would be nice if there is a law that says "any domain name can be sold only for a maximum of 10 dollars" - that would prevent the disgusting domain squatters. It would upset those who spent millions already, but it might have some affect on the future squatting of domains.
- saraid216 14y ago
  > This is disgusting, but everything is fair in love, war and business :( Um, no. That's not true. Sending armed men into your competitor's retail store to trash the place and scare off customers is not "fair". This is also why, among other reasons, it's illegal.
- wpietri 14y ago
  No, everything is not fair in business. Commerce is one of the many mechanisms by which we collaborate in making a better world. If you have found a way to abuse that mechanism to enrich yourself at the expense of others, then you're an asshole. That you can get away with something for a while does not make it right, and it does not make you less of an asshole. Indeed, I'd say that finding a new way to fuck people over, and therefore forcing the creation of a new regulatory apparatus that burdens us all, makes you more of an asshole.

matznerd 14y ago

Godaddy definitely does this, if not directly, they also can suggest the domain you've search to other people searching because it is likely a good domain...

JoeCortopassi 14y ago
It's the reason why I just use `whois domainiamsearching.com` from the command line whenever I look up domains I'm interested in. Way quicker than the web based look up, as well as not having to worry about some third party (or your isp) trying to snake a domain out from under you
- larrys 14y ago
  For .com and .net names using the above method Verisign GRS has access to that info. There is nothing to prevent whois.verisign-grs.net (or the others they operate) from logging your request -or- from someone sniffing it by other means (it's plaintext after all).
  - uxp 14y ago
    Someone sniffing my line, while is of much greater concern, is also much less likely to occur. GoDaddy (or any other whois website frontend for that matter) automating registrations if a whois lookup purchase isn't made immediately is much more likely, purely on a practical level.

ErikHuisman 14y ago

Indeed, this proves nothing! Godaddy does millions of domain registrations a year. Imagine how many lookups they do in a single day. Just by sheer change it will happen often a domain is registered by somebody shortly after a someone else did a lookup. There's no proof either way.

TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
The trick would be to search for a bunch of random, long, very undesirable domains, to see if it's automated. Of course, if it's manual, it won't prove it.

incision 14y ago

It's hard for me to put anything past Godaddy. I was taken aback when a domain I owned expired and Godaddy "held it for me" to the tune of $80. I just waited a few months and re-registered after they dropped it.

shawnee_ 14y ago

Some Godaddy employees certainly have access to the data of who is looking for what This is scary for many reasons. Although it barely made a bleep on HN, GoDaddy recently acquired Outright.com Once upon a time, Outright had a great vision. To be like Mint, but for small businesses. For "the little guy". People sign up, plug in their bank account info, credit cards, eBay + PayPal, etc and voila! Here's your P&L. Makes doing taxes easy. Customers? Generally of the unsuspecting "lifestyle business", sole prop, a person / family business kind that just didn't know any better. Over time, Outright's servers became chock full of data (yes, even from deleted accounts), such that it could paint a live stream of a person's or a business's financial health. This would be fine and dandy but for the fact that Outright was taken over by an incredibly unethical and morally incomprehensible CEO who, apparently, decided to sell out all of his users' privacy and security to one of his kind. So GoDaddy is now in the business of "accounting" and has access to the live stream of financial health of a whole lotta small businesses - to exploit and do who knows what with.

Osiris 14y ago
Which CEO are you referring to? There's been a few changes over the past year.

jseliger 14y ago

GoDaddy has certainly been caught doing nasty things before, as explained in "GoDaddy goes to great lengths to hide its expired domain warehousing operations": http://domainnamewire.com/2008/12/03/standard-tactics-llc-how-godaddy-profits-from-expired-domains/ http://domainnamewire.com/2008/12/03/standard-tactics-llc-ho... . Only the company's IPO revealed its internal structure.

Osiris 14y ago

Is it possible that it's someone else registering the domain but using GoDaddy's privacy package to hide their registration details? I think it's domains by proxy or something along those lines. Also, for every registration don't registrars have to pay the ICANN fees for each domain? At almost $10/domain it would seem unwise to automatically register any domain people are searching for as it could end up costing a lot of money in fees. Disclosure: I work at GoDaddy, but I do not work on domains, so I have no knowledge about that area of the business.

larrys 14y ago

Note: I own registrar and we are a competitor of godaddy. That said a few points: 1) As others have pointed out the sheer volume of domain lookups that are done at godaddy make it unlikely this would be profitable for GD to do not to mention the PR problem for that matter. Registrars do pay for domain names. Currently the cost (including ICANN fees) are $8.03 per domain (plus some other minor type costs as well). All registrars pay the same price .com .net, volume doesn't matter. Very often registrars sell below cost btw. 2) "but their employees certainly could be, or they could sell domain query data to a 3rd party to keep their hands clean. Some Godaddy employees certainly have access to the data of who is looking for what." Is possible of course. So far no proof of that. Important point of course is that even the info (as I pointed out in another comment) when you do a command line whois to the Verisign whois server can be sniffed and/or it's possible someone at Verisign is getting at the data (or that Verisign is selling it for that matter). Since GD is the largest registrar it is quite possible the info is sniffed elsewhere and registered at GD. 3) "algorithm that looks that those domains for dictionary words and possibly look at Google keyword search volume on each one and only buy the ones that pass some minimum criteria" Exactly the way back in the 90's that I registered domain names. Except it was by excite or yahoo I don't remember. I can vouch for that personally although most good names as we know are taken long ago. 4) "or there isn't some low level tech or manager who isn't doing this on their own." Then the culprit isn't GD but someone who works for them (in all fairness). So this could easily happen at any registrar. It is possible to setup a system where a rogue employee can't get at the data of course. But that doesn't prevent what can happen as detailed in #2 above.