Could Intuit Buy GoDaddy?

I read an article about possible GoDaddy buyers on Fool.com written by Anders Bylund, “Who’s Hot for GoDaddy?” In the article, Bylund mentions Google, Amazon, Cisco, HP, Oracle, Microsoft, and IBM as potential suitors for the domain registrar who, according to the Wall Street Journal, may be coming up for an auction with a starting bid of $1 Billion.

One company that I thought might make an interesting buyer of GoDaddy, purely based on synergy, is Intuit. Intuit is a publicly traded company with a market cap of nearly $14 Billion. The company offers small business financial management tools and services, such as Quick Books. Intuit primarily targets small and medium-sized businesses, which seems to be the same audience as Godaddy’s domain registrants.

In 2007, Intuit shelled out $170 Million for web development company, Homestead. The company offers web building services primarily for small or medium sized businesses. In a way, this actually competes with GoDaddy’s Website Tonight offering.

I don’t think I own stock in Intuit, and I am not a finance guy, so I have no idea if they could even make this work. It’s just one company I would think could possibly be a suitor for the largest domain registrar.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

13 COMMENTS

  1. I’m a former Intuit employee and it does make sense. Parsons sold his former company to them…. Web.com just bought Register.com to support their SME business.

  2. Intuit makes perfect sense.

    GoDaddy’s customers can be generalized into two types:
    1. Small Businesses (SOHO)
    2. consumers

    The MotleyFool article seems to miss this point.

    Who are the biggest service provider for small businesses?

    It ain’t Oracle and IBM.

    1. Intuit
    2. ebay
    3. Yahoo
    4. Google
    5. Staples
    6. Fed-Ex

  3. I hope its not Intuit. Then again, I hope its no one.

    Once Godaddy sells, and Parsons leaves, the bottom will fall out – prices will increase, no more coupons/specials for which its well known to offer… Its just going to be a disaster. I really hope no one buys it.

    Nothing good can come from this, from the customer perspective. Nothing good ever does come from purchases like this really.

  4. “Once Godaddy sells, and Parsons leaves, the bottom will fall out – prices will increase, no more coupons/specials for which its well known to offer”

    Duh, but imagine if private equity buys it: It will be stripped of assets one by one, loaded in debt then sold to some naive losers.

    Whoever buys it has to get their money back, GoDaddy apparently is not making money, or they would have mentioned that long time ago.

  5. @Priv: they have to be turning a profit. They just opened and hired, I think, 1000 more people in Iowa. As the sole investor and owner, why would Parsons run that ship into the ground AND at the same time put it up for sale? Anyone who does their due diligence will immediately see if they’re bleeding profusely or not.

    I would be one to guess that they’re turning a profit. What the margin is, that is another question. Many of their products are intangible and do not need to be houses in warehouses other than server facilities. If they’re losing money, then the first and easiest thing would be to sell off parts of the business. Hosting comes to mind first. It strips out a lot of hardware costs and employment requirements.

    Nah… I think Parsons is looking to cash in big and whomever purchases it (I think Register.com or one of the other big ones) will destroy it. If its register then I am moving 1600+ names out of there. I will NOT do business with register. Godaddy has its issues, but Godaddy has never screwed me and stolen a domain name from me and given it to someone else BEFORE its registration period was up.

    I think speculation is Intuit because they’re the ones who purchased Parsons Technology from him way back in the 80s/90s? I dont think Intuit has the pockets, nor the desire. Google? Microsoft? there are two possibilities.. Who knows.

  6. I think Parsons knows exactly what he is doing.This is the best time to sell, at he’s pick.I dont think prices will increase because of the new comer,WalMart.Their prices are in the $5 range, so based on that figure GoDaddy will not raise their prices.I olso think that their profit margins were not big, other wisethr compnay should sell for much much more money.

  7. I’d have to speculate and say that the company is not doing well…otherwise, now is probably not the best time to sell considering the economy and all. That’s not to say he won’t make a lot of money when/if it’s sold.

  8. I use the service and am a reseller of the service. I also hope that things do not change. With that in mind i would say that Mr Parsons is a promoter. His view points are pretty interesting and could he be using this a publicity? If the deal is not clearly in his favor he has the domain business talking about him with lots of free press. I will be interesting to see what happens.

  9. It seems the rumors about Godaddy’s change of ownership are true after all.
    Godaddy has just announced its new girl Juilian Micheals on its main page…
    talking about the symbolism in their new choice…
    Danica obviously stood for a race going on into registering domain names left and right…. The motto is : “Survival of the fastest…”;
    now, Julian?!!! What could she possibly symbolize?
    Her image could only mean one thing: “survival of the fittest…” and not the those with the fattest accounts…
    Perhaps its an indication of a new economic era, where people like Parsons have to sell their empire and get into economic shape…perhaps its a sign of an era that features cutting down on the flab of “pigeon’s shit” domains (to put it in Rick Shwartz words) – the biggest loser era…
    What’s more alarming is the possibility of an indication of a price change in registration fees that requires a julian’s worth of economic fitness to survive…

  10. Personally i dont think many will notice (gen public) a change of ownership at godaddy and i feel if intiut do go ahead and raise prices others will fill the gap left for cheap domains.

    Upon any pre-sale / sale, the prices will drop to make things looks fatter or to raise back monies spent on acquisition

    but, even though im wary of all things google i hope they stake their claim in the marketplace seeing i would love to buy domains with adsense revenue, hopefully cheap prices too.
    A very interesting thought

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