GoDaddy's IPO Yanked Just As Quickly As Its Superbowl Ad

from the try-again-later dept

Tue, Aug 8th 2006 3:27pm — Mike Masnick

For all the buzz and hype about how the tech world is back (or that there's a new "bubble") one thing that has worried more than a few people is the lack of any real market for tech IPOs. Some may say this is a good thing -- as it was IPO madness that fueled much of the last bubble. However, a really weak IPO market where even legitimate companies are limited can spell a lot of trouble both for tech companies and their investors. Vonage tried to prove that the IPO window was back open, but we all saw how that turned out. Earlier this year, though, we noted that if a company like GoDaddy could make it out, that would be a catalyst for other tech firms to start marching down Wall Street. So much for those plans. Following Vonage's dismal debut, and other companies like Clearwire decide that the private investment market was a better bet, GoDaddy has decided to pull its IPO filing, citing the ever popular "market conditions." Of course, these things can change in an instant. It's widely forgotten, but in the middle of the last bubble (summer of '98), the bottom dropped out of the IPO market and lots of companies pulled their plans. Late that fall, however, EarthWeb and TheGlobe both took their chances and blew open the IPO window with record setting (if ridiculous) debuts. While we wait for the 2006 or 2007 equivalent, however, feel free to check out the celebrity blank-check and no-business-model IPOs that are still going on.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

22 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Coward, 8 Aug 2006 @ 4:23pm

whats an ipo
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Aiwanei, 8 Aug 2006 @ 4:29pm
  
  Re:
  Initial Public Offering
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
DomainKiting.com, 8 Aug 2006 @ 4:33pm

Re: GODADDY ON THE BLOCK?
Would AOL and GoDaddy make a good match. AOL is moving in other directions and owning the number 1 domain management company sounds like something to be considered. http://DomainKiting.com is betting on it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
phil walker, 8 Aug 2006 @ 5:09pm

Money Vs Service
This bad and here is why it is a bad thing for Go daddy they droped thier prices to get customers and removed support. No they will lose on price and lack of support to other compines.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 8 Aug 2006 @ 5:16pm
  
  Re: Money Vs Service
  I'm having a rather hard time understanding what you're saying through your poor grammar and lack of punctuation, so if I'm off base let me know... It sounds like you're saying that GoDaddy's prices dropped and they removed customer support to make up the cost? Ummm, no? Their prices have dropped and their call center force over doubling in size and remaining 24/7.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - phil walker, 8 Aug 2006 @ 5:42pm
    
    Re: Re: Money Vs Service
    Sorry I was typing from my PDA phone. They went 24/7 with long hold times. A call que that takes for ever to get to a live person. Not to mention they made up for bad support with poor self help options.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - Anonymous Coward, 8 Aug 2006 @ 5:46pm
      
      Re: Re: Re: Money Vs Service
      long hold times? i see you haven't tried to call in since about um..... january. they have maintained either a ZERO hold time or under two minutes for the better part of 2006. you can always get a live person.
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
geez, 8 Aug 2006 @ 6:11pm

i've found that most people who complain about godaddy support are expecting support on their A) scripting B) databases C) coding..... all of those things fall under the duties of a web designer, not that of the entity who maintains your hosting server. granted, some of their super advanced scripting abilities might not be 100%, but if you're a super advenced programmer and you NEED those kinds of abilities in a host, you should just shell out the cash and get a dedicated server rather than relying on a shared platform.

people complain a lot about not getting service for free that they should be paying a webmaster a lot of $$$ for
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Sunshine Bear, 8 Aug 2006 @ 7:06pm

Yup Yup Y'all
Hmmm . . . AOL and GoDaddy? I think not. AOL is the devil and their support is terrible. GoDaddy has a reputation for excellent customer support and I think we have all heard the AOL call. And whats this talk about GoDaddy going to 24/7 support? They have been 24/7 since as long as I can remember. Hold times can be viewed on GoDaddys website at anytime and rarely are as bad as MR.PDA claims. As far as phone in and self help support . . . Is it really that hard? I mean a blind monkey with mild case of turrets and a good dose of epilepsy could follow the simple on screen instructions. But if you cant even type on a PDA phone then you might find it a bit taxing.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Eagle, 8 Aug 2006 @ 8:59pm

Vonage Failure
Vonage probably failed for other reasons. Vonage is the roach motel of phone companies. They have sales people working around the clock, but intentionally don’t put their customer service extension in the menu on their phone system. This is dishonest and I decide not to do further business with them. Unfortunately, they won’t or can’t cancel the number transfer. I contact Qwest to see if they can stop it and at first they think so, but eventually they say no, but let it go through and in a week they can request it back. So we do. This leaves me without the ability to receive calls for over 3 weeks. I tell the reps at Vonage that I want my number transfer cancelled and plan to cancel service - they warn me not to cancel until the number safely returns to Qwest. Qwest gives me the same advice. It takes 20 days for a number to transfer - so this entire fiasco is over 40 days long. Cleverly, Vonage provides a 30 day money back guarantee. Criminal.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Aug 2006 @ 10:07pm

Go Daddy's support is hilarious. It's not about the customer it's about sales. Their online support is also hilarious. There is no sales involved, but if you dont have 80 tickets done for the day you get a mark on your record. It's about fast as possible and sales.... Customer support? HA! When they hire you they spend the first week telling you all the ways they can fire you.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
MoD, 8 Aug 2006 @ 10:12pm

A bit off-topic
But since we're talking about bad service, I've had a horrible time trying to get my DSL service back up with Verizon. =(
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Double Down, 8 Aug 2006 @ 11:05pm

I don't know if anyone has noticed...
but the post was about IPOs, and not if GoDaddy has good customer support or not. Look, my personal opinion is that the IPO bubble of last decade was a once in a lifetime gig. It's never going to happen again, the Vonage's and Go Daddy's of the world are going to have to show that they are profitable businesses over the long haul before people are going to invest in them. Vonage would have probably flew the first go round, but now everyone sees the company as it is--a DOG. Go Daddy's is in too competitive a market. The reason I switched to Go Daddy (low prices, pretty good support--especially in comparison to NSI) is the same reasons I'd switch to someone else, and frankly I've been looking around (for another registrar). So they could as easily be out as fast as they came in. Don't you think investors are wary of this sort of thing now-a-days? Especially after being fleeced, not so much by the companies themselves, but by the investment banks, venture capitalists, and angel investors that took MOST of that money to the bank. And if you think that the founders of those tech companies were the ones that went to the bank, you are HUGELY mistaken. Most of them were pawns. It was the perfect storm of legitimate stealling. So good riddance to the Wall Street shysters, and hopefully this will usher in long over due a legitimacy to the tech sector--especially in terms of online/ecommerce/dot.bomb business models.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Your Mom wears pants!!, 9 Aug 2006 @ 4:49pm

Ha ha! IPO? International Plate of Omlets? Your mom is a pirate and she wears pants . . . arrrggg!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Your Mom wears pants!!, 9 Aug 2006 @ 4:49pm

Ha ha! IPO? International Plate of Omlets? Your mom is a pirate and she wears pants . . . arrrggg!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2006 @ 4:50pm
  
  Re: Pants?
  What Pants thats weird. i thought we were talking about an IPO. What a crack head.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
AllOver, 10 Aug 2006 @ 8:47am

I remember when a year after I canceled my godaddy account getting a domain renewal fee automatically charged to my card. This account wasn't used very much anymore and it overdrafted it. After calling godaddy I was told you had to opt out of their automatic renewal, which I was NEVER told about when creating/cancelling my account. You would think cancelling an account would be a pretty clear indicator that your business with that company is done.....but not in godaddy's case.

Bottom line:
scummy company, stay away
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
FloatDomains.com, 14 Aug 2006 @ 6:14pm

GODADDY CANCELS DOMAIN FORWARDING
Many are reporting to DomainKiting.com that GoDaddy is sending its customer a renewal notice for "FREE FORWARDING" then if they do not "RENEW" each domains name forwarding the forwarding is CANCELED and the domain forwards....yes you guessed it to GoDaddy's Parked pages and quess who gets the cash?

As a public company these type little tricks would of gotten GoDaddy in a bunch of trouble perhaps.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
spanier, 19 Nov 2006 @ 5:46pm

How can godaddy survive ?
I manage 150 dedicated servers worldwide and had 3 of them with godaddy. Never had such a poor support, so much problems and nightmare as with godaddy. How can a company like this stay in the market ?

Their process ist simple - their rules are clear : do not care about customer problems.

They should go off the market as soon as possible. Even the Mullahs in Iran run better hosting services as godaddy does. Never go there, if you need to rent windows dedicated servers.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Jack Kimbal, 6 Jan 2007 @ 7:58am

GoDaddy
I have been in business (both as owner and slave) for around 30 + years now. And one thing never fails to amaze me. People are basically stupid.
I have seen more people come back to complain about the lack of something when they basically got that something at a highly reduced or no cost price.
Some how when it's free or close to free that means that it should have more value than a brand new f-16 fighter jet loaded with all options, bullets included.
Looking at past posts and various blogs about GoDaddy's bad reputation, I usaly find that the person doing the complaining did not read the terms of agreement which basically states — Hey this falls under the not out responsibility but yours – clause. This is particularly true with the techies that want to impress every one with there coding prowess, which GoDaddy clearly states that is not their problem but yours. It's up to you to make your fancy code work .
Says it right there in black and white.
As to GoDaddys other faults, I have used them on and off in the past and have never had a problem with canceling or credit card , or any other of the many problems listed. Which leads me back to the stupid problem.
As to the IPO issue, GoDaddy is making big bucks. They don't need to have investors, and last I looked it was not against the law not to go the IPO route.
I say Mr. Parson is smart, why give up control of a cash cow just to give the milk money away. After all it is his business to do what he pleases with.
Oh and by the way, I have seen major companies come and go. If GoDaddy is doing bad things they will eventually go. But I don't see that happing in the
near future. Now I know I'll catch some flame on this opinion of mine and to those I direct this note — you guys better start dumping some chlorine in the gene pool
or your headed the way of the dodo
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 20 Apr 2007 @ 9:39pm

JAZMINE DHINZA IS A BITCH
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 18 Dec 2007 @ 2:30am

3 words- stay away from godaddy.com they will take over your rights to a domain after 12 days expired. industry standard is 45 days. they will explain over the phone that they incure extra costs and charge their own redemption fee, which is a lie. they hold your domain hostage after 2 months if you should change your whois information. check out nodaddy.com
[ link to this | view in chronology ]