GoDaddy Promotes Its Own Service When Switching Nameservers

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Domain registrar offers its own competing service when changing nameservers.

Domain name registrar GoDaddy .com is promoting its own domain parking service “Cash Parking” to customers who attempt to change a domain’s nameservers to a competing domain parking company.

If you have a domain name on GoDaddy’s name servers (which is the case whenever you register a new domain name or use forwarding) and try to switch to the nameservers of a domain parking company, you receive an alert with a special domain parking offer:


The system is set up to only offer the parking special if you switch your nameservers to a parking service. In my tests the offer was presented when switching to ns1. Parked.com (Parked.com’s nameservers) but not when changing the nameservers to my web hosting company.

I understand trying to cross-sell your own products to customers, but to me the domain name control panel is sacred ground and shouldn’t be used to push products, especially in such a targeted manner. What’s next? If I change my nameservers to a popular web hosting company will GoDaddy interrupt the process by offering its own web hosting services? With GoDaddy grabbing 45% of new domain name registrations, at some point these behaviors will be frowned upon as anti-competitive. If this were Google or Microsoft, a competitor’s lawyers would already be on the phone.