The new generic top-level domain .GODADDY was delegated at the end of last week, Domain Incite reports. It isn’t hard to guess that the gTLD is a dot-brand managed by the GoDaddy company, the world’s largest domain registrar, which consequently, also becomes a registry. The company's highly concise new gTLD application describes .GODADDY as follows: “The mission or purpose of the .GODADDY gTLD is strictly for branding protection and internal use. The gTLD .GODADDY will give visitors to any .GODADDY site the assurance that they are truly dealing with Go Daddy and not an imposter or cybersquatter.”
GoDaddy was not the first domain company to get its own dot-brand, with Neustar and Verisign already owning the gTLDs .NEUSTAR and .VERISIGN by that time. It’s not the first domain registrar with a dot-brand either, as the major French company OVH had been delegated the .OVH domain by then too. GoDaddy had applied for two other gTLDs – .HOME and .CASA – but withdrew their applications almost immediately due to a shift in company strategy.
