It was a team effort, but GoDaddy.com was the main mover; it’s this domain name registrar that “will take over the entire portfolio of more than 850,000 generic top-level domain (gTLD) names held by RegisterFly.”
“GoDaddy And Friends Rescue RegisterFly Database”
Yet, for the uninitiated, that phrasing makes the act sound like a hostile acquisition, and it was really more of a rescue mission. As the Channel Register’s Burke Hansen notes, “RegisterFly controlled two million domains, but a bitter personal breakup between the two founders led eventually to bizarre personal attacks, acrimonious litigation, and ultimately to the loss of ICANN accreditation.”
So when GoDaddy stepped in, “[I]t’s what many RegisterFly customers asked us to do,” says Bob Parsons, the company’s CEO and founder. In an official statement, he also adds, “We worked with ICANN to effect a migration of the RegisterFly domains to GoDaddy.com and help those customers left in limbo.”
But ICANN and GoDaddy aren’t the only ones behind this benevolent act. “Afilias and VeriSign, the two registries with the most RegisterFly names, have forgone considerable fees for transfers,” according to a press release. “The gTLD registries GNR, NeuStar and PIR also acted to prevent deletion of names. As well, Tucows took uncompensated effort to provide data and pursue a solution that would protect registrants.”
So all appears to be well in regards to the RegisterFly fiasco; those affected domain names should be safely within GoDaddy’s grasp by the end of next week. GoDaddy does, of course, stand to profit as those domains get renewed, but it was still nice (and interesting) to see everyone pull together on this one.
