If you're in the IT industry in the United States, you can't be unfamiliar with the name GoDaddy.

In the early days of the internet, you almost had to go through this company to buy a domain.

The first domain I purchased for a personal project was also from GoDaddy.

Even after the dot-com bubble burst in the early 2000s, it was one of the few companies that survived and actually grew.

Now, it has become a massive platform that offers everything from web hosting, email, online stores, to marketing tools, but it started off modestly.

And if you look into the history of this company, it's a typical American growth story — aggressive marketing, legal disputes, controversies, and recently, even the FTC is involved.

The founder of GoDaddy is Bob Parsons. A Vietnam War veteran, he entered the IT business after returning from the war.

In 1997, during the early days of internet popularity, he founded the company under the name 'Jomax Technologies.' In 1999, he changed the brand name to GoDaddy, and the reason is simple: he wanted a name that was easy to remember.

The strategy at that time was clear: "Let's make it cheap and easy to buy domains."

At that time, the domain registration market was dominated by large companies like VeriSign, with prices more than double and procedures complicated.

GoDaddy entered the market by drastically lowering prices and simplifying the UI.

In fact, in 2002, they even sued VeriSign for domain slamming, and in 2003, they clashed with VeriSign over its Site Finder service. It was like a small company throwing punches at a giant.

GoDaddy's explosive growth wasn't due to technology. It was because of marketing. Especially the Super Bowl ads that started in the early 2000s became a huge topic in the U.S. They sparked controversy every time with their provocative and suggestive concepts. There were times when the broadcasts almost got pulled.

Ironically, this controversy skyrocketed brand awareness. It's a textbook case in marketing.

It proved the saying, "Bad publicity is still publicity."

GoDaddy has been a frequent participant in numerous legal disputes.

The most representative are domain-related disputes. The domain market operates on a 'first come, first served' basis, leading to continuous issues with registering domains similar to famous brands, trademark conflicts, and cybersquatting lawsuits.

In 2006, they canceled the FamilyAlbum.com domain due to outdated WHOIS information, which caused a major controversy. Critics argued that in an era where domains are money, this was essentially a violation of property rights.

In 2024, they faced a lawsuit for returning a domain that was legitimately auctioned back to its original owner. A Swedish company that bought calor.com at auction had the domain clawed back two months later.

Content policy issues were also significant. While blocking copyright-infringing sites, their standards for politically sensitive sites were inconsistent.

The incident in 2007, where they blocked the security site Seclists.org due to a single complaint from MySpace, is well-known. 250,000 pages of security content vanished in an instant.

In 2021, they terminated the contract with Texas Right to Life, which was operating a reporting site related to the Texas Heartbeat Act. This raised some concerns from conservatives in Texas. Is it right for a platform to arbitrarily take down a site based on a legitimate law? The de-platforming of gun-related sites has been similarly criticized. The National Shooting Sports Foundation called it a direct threat to free speech.

The inability to establish consistent standards between free speech and corporate responsibility is a problem, regardless of political views.

When a platform becomes a gatekeeper of content, the standards must be transparent, but GoDaddy has continually failed in that regard.

Then in January 2025, the FTC targeted GoDaddy. The allegations were that they had not implemented "reasonable and appropriate security measures" since 2018. Specifically: failure to apply MFA (multi-factor authentication), lack of security threat monitoring, unprotected consumer data access connections, absence of asset and software inventory management, and failure to implement network segmentation.

This is not a startup; it's the security level of a publicly traded company with tens of millions of customers.

What was the result? Between 2019 and 2022, several major security breaches occurred.

In 2019, an intruder accessed a shared hosting environment, leaking SSH credentials for about 28,000 customers and 199 employees. Approximately 1,000 customer credit card numbers were also stolen. This was because there was no MFA in place. In 2021, the stolen credentials were used to breach another app and were exploited in SEO fraud. It happened again in 2022.

If you're in the IT industry, you know how ridiculous this is.

No MFA for SSH access? No file integrity monitoring? In 2018?

In May 2025, the FTC finalized a consent order.

GoDaddy must establish a comprehensive information security program and undergo independent third-party audits.

There were no fines, but the compliance costs will be significant.

GoDaddy stated, "There are no monetary penalties," but the FTC officially declared that their security was a mess.

After Bob Parsons stepped down as CEO in 2011, the company was restructured into a corporate organization.

In 2015, they went public on the New York Stock Exchange. They are now a company with millions of customers worldwide, providing 'online business infrastructure.'

Interestingly, small businesses and individual entrepreneurs remain their main customers.

They still maintain their initial identity of "making it easy for anyone to start online." But how did they manage the data of those customers at this level? This irony accurately reflects GoDaddy's current position.

In 2025, they were also ordered to pay $170 million in damages in a patent infringement lawsuit from Express Mobile. This was related to their website builder feature, and if this ruling is upheld, it could have a ripple effect on competitors like Wix and Squarespace.

Regarding DNS, they were also sued for antitrust by a company called Entri. They were accused of blocking competitors and demanding licensing fees over the open standard (Domain Connect) they created.

In my opinion, GoDaddy's history exemplifies the typical American IT company. A small idea, aggressive marketing, controversies and lawsuits, and evolution into a massive platform. This must be acknowledged. Their execution was impressive.

However, as an IT professional, I can say that if this company had invested even half the energy it put into marketing into security, the FTC situation would not have happened.

It's inexcusable that a platform serving millions of small businesses operated without even MFA.

The title of "a company that turned controversy into marketing" may sound impressive, but behind it lies the reality of failing to protect customer data properly.

What if they had built a security team with the money spent on Super Bowl ads? Wouldn't that have been the true "platform for customers"?