For sale: GoDaddy, asking $1 billion or best offer

By Fahmida Y. Rashid September 13, 2010

Founded in 1997, GoDaddy is privately held by ex-Marine Bob Parsons and is well known for its racy advertising, featuring race car driver Danica Patrick and other scantily clad women. As one of the largest domain name registrars around, GoDaddy currently manages more than 43 million domain names. It also sells e-commerce, security, and other add-on services for people to manage their Web presence.

According to the Wall Street Journal, GoDaddy had revenues between $750 million and $800 million in 2009. Some reports claim the company generates revenues of $2.7 million a day.

GoDaddy filed (and withdrew) papers announcing an IPO in 2006, and rumors resurfaced earlier this year that GoDaddy will go public again. On Sept. 2, Parsons announced on his campy video blog that he was considering selling the company.

With this announcement, GoDaddy is seeking bids from private equity firms. Private equity firms like domain name registrars because of the steady and predictable flow of fee-based subscriptions.

However, $1 billion seems a little much for a company that essentially holds domain names and hosts Web sites. Web.com bought much-smaller-competitor Register.com for $135 million earlier this year.

Qatalyst Partners, headed by heavyweight tech banker Frank Quattrone, will shop GoDaddy to interested buyers.
Qatalyst recently advised 3PAR during Dell and HP’s bidding frenzy. With Qatalyst at the helm, Parsons might just get his asking price.

Fahmida Y. Rashid

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Computing

Hurry! Surface Pro 9 and Surface Laptop 5 have hefty price cuts today

The Surface Pro 9 in laptop mode on a table.

Microsoft's Surface devices are high-performance machines that are designed to maximize the capabilities of Windows 11. If you're on the lookout for Surface Laptop and Surface Pro deals, don't miss this chance to get a discount from Best Buy on the latest consumer models, as the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 are only available for commercial users for now. The Microsoft Surface Pro 9 is on sale for only $800, for $300 in savings on its original price of $1,100, while the Microsoft Surface Laptop 5 is also down to $800, for $500 in savings on its sticker price of $1,300. You better hurry with your purchase though, as we're not sure when these offers will expire.
Microsoft Surface Pro 9 -- $800, was $1,100

Microsoft Surface Laptop 5 -- $800, was $1,300

Computing

Best SSD deals: Samsung 990 Pro discounts

Samsung 990 PRO SSD over a dark background.

As recently as a decade ago, you would most likely be using HDDs for storage, which tend to be quite slow and take up an absolute tone of space, even the smaller form factor ones made for laptops. If you wanted something a bit more fancy, like a modern M.2 SSD, you'd be paying a huge premium even for smaller sizes like 256GB and 512GB. Luckily there have been huge leaps in technology and manufacturing, and these days you can get your hands on the best SSDs for a pretty good price. Not only does that mean that you can save space, but you can also load Windows and your applications a lot faster, something we expect to see in the best gaming PCs and gaming laptops. If you need a new SSD to upgrade a gaming rig, check out RAM deals and GPU deals as well. If you need something that can swap between multiple devices, you'll prefer checking out external hard drive deals.
Our favorite SSD deal

If you're looking for something that's top-of-the-line and won't break the bank, then the Samsung 990 PRO is probably the way to go. It has the newer PCIe 4.0 standard, which makes it a great PS5 SSD if you can get it a heatsink, and it has a read speed of 7450 Mbps and a write speed of 6900 Mbps, so it's lightning fast. The 2TB model here has been discounted down to just $190 from the original $250, so you're saving a pretty solid $60 in the process. There is a 1TB version that's cheaper if you don't think you need that much, as well as a 4TB model that's great for those who have a tendency to hoard data.

Computing

Best Surface Laptop and Surface Pro deals: From $523

Microsoft Surface Go 3 sitting on table.

While the MacBook Air has become synonymous with being a high-quality and lightweight laptop, it does mean that you'd have to be part of the Apple ecosystem. Luckily, there are some great alternatives out there, and Microsoft's Surface lineup is made specifically to compete with MacBook deals. While the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 aren't quite here yet, at least at the consumer level, you can still grab the latest models with some pretty great deals. That's why we've gone out and looked for our favorite Surface Laptop and Surface Pro deals and compiled them all here for you to save you the hassle, although if these don't quite do it for you, be sure to check out other great laptop deals and 2-in-1 laptop deals as well.
Microsoft Surface Go 3 -- $523, was $550

Functioning as a 2-in-1 laptop that can switch between tablet mode and laptop mode, the Microsoft Surface Go 3 won't have trouble dealing with basic tasks as it's equipped with the Intel Pentium Gold 6500Y processor and 8GB of RAM. The 10.5-inch touchscreen with 1920 x 1080 resolution is bright and colorful, and its 128GB SSD is more than enough for your documents. The Microsoft Surface Go 3 ships with Windows 11 Home in Mode, so you can start using it as soon as you unbox it. The device also promises up to 11 hours of battery life before requiring a recharge.