Blake Irving defends domain investors — GoDaddy CEO
Domain sharks? Not so fast.
GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving held a chat on Product Hunt Live this morning. A person asked him if domain resellers or “sharks” were a problem and what ought to be done regarding it. Here’s the exchange:
Q: Bharath B Lohray
Are domain resellers / sharks a serious problem? How do you think this ought to be dealt with?
A: Blake Irving— CEO, GoDaddy
Like stocks and real estate, domain names have quantifiable value. Anytime there is a situation of supply and demand, you’re going to have people investing. Since domain names are unique, there’s an opportunity. We fully support the investors who do it the right way. These are people who look for trends and register potentially good names. They then take the risk of renewing them year following year to potentially sell them.
What we don’t support is people who register trademarks, try to extort others or do things in an unethical way—and those folks are out there. Luckily, there are formal processes in place from ICANN (the domains governing body) to root out bad players. I’ve seen it work pretty well.
Other topics in the discussion include artificial intelligence, emoji domains, SOPA, equal pay and entrepreneurship.
