Earlier this month, online reports revealed that GoDaddy.com was keeping an eye on potentially lucrative domain names and snapping them up if the owners let them lapse. Once GoDaddy acquired the domains, the company would fill the defunct page with moneymaking ads while simultaneously offering the domain up for auction.
None of those actions is illegal, but online analyst Andrew Allemann of DomainWire pointed out that GoDaddy was using a subsidiary company called Standard Tactics, LLC to take ownership of the domains. Although Standard Tactics is a GoDaddy property, it's located in a different state and has entirely different whois information.
During a conversation with Alleman on an Internet radio show, GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons said that his company is going to shut down Standard Tactics. On top of that, GoDaddy is going to move all of the outstanding warehoused domains into its online auction system – which is where they were going anyway – with the change that all available domains will be offered for a starting price of $10.
So why did GoDaddy start the Standard Tactics to begin with? Parsons said that he and his team founded the subsidiary company to perform "research on monetization practices."
Tech analyst Robin Wauters isn't convinced.
"I don’t buy that for a second, but it’s good to see the company decided to listen to its critics, was open to a discussion, and didn’t hesitate too long to make the right decision," Wauters wrote for TechCrunch.com. "There’s no question that the bad publicity surrounding the company about the shady subsidiary effectively spurred the decision to close Standard Tactics."