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GoDaddy Sells To Investor Group
wiredmikey writes "Domain name registrar and Web hosting provider GoDaddy, announced it has agreed to receive a strategic investment from private equity firms KKR, Silver Lake and Technology Crossover Ventures. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but the Wall Street Journal reported people familiar with the deal saying it could be worth approximately $2.25 billion. The Scottsdale, Arizona based company which has built its marketing around scantly-clad women, manages more than 48 million domain names."
It's KKR.
The barbarians are at the gate.
They will pile the company, emit dividends with wherever cash there's in the company, mass layoff employees, break it up in separate divisions and sell it.
I've used GoDaddy for many years but have started to shy away from them recently due to the girls being just a little over the top for a professional business. I found it awkward too many times dealing with businesses and their comments regarding the plastering of girls everywhere on the site, especially when I'm dealing with a female executive and the awkwardness when the girls display on the screen front and center. Another issue with GoDaddy is their site always feels sluggish, as if they are running their site on 10 year old servers.
To my knowledge they were one of the very few SSL providers which immediately revoked (and redistributed) every SSL certificate made with openssl when the Debian SSL disaster struck in 2008.
And well; coming from Europe I have to say that the continuous examples as to how prude the US actually is always makes me chuckle. The banned superbowl commercials for example; when looking at those I often have a hard time understanding what the fuss is all about.