GoDaddy Acquires WorldWideMedia Domain Names From Berkens

LOS ANGELES—GoDaddy has acquired the majority of Michael Berkens’ domain name portfolio, the company announced today. Berkens, the publisher of TheDomains.com blog whose portfolio was under the company Worldwide Media, sold about 70,000 domain names to GoDaddy as part of the deal. This acquisition consists of domain names including 373.com, Faculty.com, CarAuctions.com, and iBill.com. It also includes names targeted at small businesses such as BikeRentals.com, EventPlanning.com, and KitchenChef.com. These names are now available for purchase by anyone looking to establish or enhance their digital identity. "GoDaddy is focused on making sure our customers get the perfect online name for their business or passion, so we're always looking at ways to improve what domain names our customers can register," GoDaddy Senior Vice President and General Manager, Mike McLaughlin, said in announcing the acquisition. "Our plan is to make these names accessible to small businesses. Worldwide Media, Inc.'s founder Michael Berkens has assembled an incredible portfolio of names and has been such an integral part of the domain name aftermarket for so many years." GoDaddy did not acquire Berkens’ adult domain names, nor most of his names under new top-level domain names. Berkens today on his blog noted, "Since Mostwanteddomains.com was included in the sale to Godaddy, I will be launching two new sites this week, one for our adult domain names that we retained which will be under the new gTLD; Adult.Domains. The rest of our non-adult inventory we retained, which are mostly new gTLD’s will be under The.Domains." Berkens said the GoDaddy transaction was prompted "for personal life reasons, not based on any sudden shift in my belief, or feeling about the domain industry or the value of domain names."