by JORDAN ROBERTSON
July 1, 2011
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The parent company of GoDaddy.com, a top registrar of Internet domain names, has been sold to a group of private investment firms for $2.25 billion, a person familiar with the transaction told The Associated Press.
Go Daddy Group Inc.'s sale to KKR, Silver Lake and Technology Crossover Ventures comes as the company expects to top $1.1 billion in revenue this year because expanding Internet use has fueled the creation of more websites and the "domains" needed to help find them. Go Daddy announced the sale late Friday. A person close to the transaction, who asked to remain anonymous because of not being authorized to speak publicly, told the AP the sale price.
A fact sheet accompanying the release indicated that Go Daddy's revenue has grown by more than 20 percent in each of the past several years.
The Go Daddy Group Inc. was founded in 1997 by Bob Parsons, who continues to serve as its CEO. The company, based in Scottsdale, Ariz., manages more than 48 million domain names, and sells other Internet-related technologies.
