As I described in a recent column, the contract for the .US domain registry is up and may be redesignated by the Department of Commerce. The quotes were due by Monday of this week.
Afilias and GoDaddy.com announced that they have formed a partnership that has bid to run the registry.
It's an interesting prospect. .US has badly underperformed, largely (I think) due to a lack of marketing and clout behind it. The alliance is called the DNAR (Domain Name Alliance Registry).
This would certainly change with GoDaddy, which is a massive hosting service with an interest in pushing customers to buy .US domains. The press release implies that they would lower the .US registry fee. It's been widely reported that, back when the .COM registry contract was being renegotiated, GoDaddy offered to run it with a $2 registry fee. Currently it's $6 and is scheduled to go up on a regular basis.
A cheap .US name space would provide a huge new up sell possibility for GoDaddy to its existing customers. Owning the .US versions of your .COM domains would suddenly cost much less.
But will they buy into GoDaddy running this domain? The company hasn't exactly pursued an image in its marketing that would endear it to the administration or, for that matter, any administration likely to come into office. Yah, they love kids. Don't we all? GoDaddy has had other problems, but their real problem here is image.
GoDaddy's bad-boy dirty image has always rubbed me the wrong way and I really doubt it gets them a dime of business they wouldn't otherwise get. It would be good for .US to have a company as big and aggressive as GoDaddy running it.
But I think a more boring company will get the contract.
