ARTHUR GOLDSTUCK: Big daddy is here to shake up SA's domain offerings
GoDaddy's website building tool can create professional websites in less than an hour
The world's biggest registrar of domain names formally arrived in SA this week, promising to shake up a tiny industry. Ironically, for a sector that underpins almost all online business activity in SA, it has a remarkably low profile. Close to 1.2-million domain names have been registered in this country by companies such as Hetzner, Afrihost and Domains.co.za. Now, their cosy dominance of the domains market is to end, with the arrival of GoDaddy, a US company with a market cap of $12.8bn (about R185bn), 9,000 staff and 77-million domain names under management. It hosted an event in Africa for the first time, choosing Johannesburg 's emerging central business district of Rosebank as its launch venue. The big focus initially will be on educating small businesses on the potential of websites, said Stefano Maruzzi, GoDaddy vice-president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, who presided over the South African launch this week. He believes that domain names are a neglected asset, bec...
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