I agree with Jeff on this very rare occasion. The Consumer Rights Act 2015 point is spot on, and the share price connection was well spotted. However, there is something more fishy afoot in my opinion.
On the legal position in the UK, what GoDaddy has done is attempt to reclassify every existing customer as a business customer through a unilateral terms update issued without prior notification. Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, a term is unfair if it causes a significant imbalance in the parties' rights and obligations to the detriment of the consumer. A clause that strips statutory consumer protections retroactively, without notice, and without consent almost certainly meets that test. An unfair term under the CRA is simply not binding on the consumer. GoDaddy's lawyers may have written it, but that doesn't make it enforceable here.
There is also a deeper issue that nobody appears to have picked up on. The CRA defines a consumer as an individual acting wholly or mainly outside their trade or business. GoDaddy cannot simply declare by contract that a personal user is a business customer. The legal definition of what constitutes a consumer is determined by statute, not by what a corporation decides to put in its terms of service. GoDaddy's lawyers don't get to override an Act of Parliament with a paragraph in a click-through agreement.
The motivation is transparent enough. By reclassifying customers as businesses, GoDaddy removes access to consumer arbitration rights, 14-day withdrawal periods, and class action mechanisms that would otherwise be available to individuals. In plain English, they are trying to make it harder and more expensive for ordinary customers to challenge them when things go wrong.
Now to the share price, because this is where it gets interesting. GoDaddy's stock hit an all-time high of $216 in January 2025. It is currently sitting around $88, representing a decline of approximately 59% in just over a year. The S&P 500 gained over 12% in the same period. This isn't a market-wide correction; it is a company specific collapse in investor confidence.
A business operating from genuine strength does not quietly reclassify 21 million customers as businesses overnight without notification. That is the behaviour of a legal department running ahead of anticipated problems and trying to limit liability exposure before something goes wrong. Combined with a $900 million share buyback programme announced to prop up the stock price, the picture being painted is of a company managing decline rather than driving growth.
The domain industry should be paying close attention. GoDaddy remains the world's largest registrar. When it starts rewriting the rules of engagement with its own customers to protect itself from legal exposure, that tells you something meaningful about where it thinks the next few years are heading.
A side note: NRS Healthcare (Nottingham Rehab), one of the giants of my specialist sector, went SPLAT last year without warning,
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/...r-customers-suppliers-creditors-and-landlords, taking the whole care sector by surprise. So, in all instances where 'over bloated' comes to mind in the face of slimmer, leaner advisories with much better pricing and massively less overheads, you need to expect the unexpected even when it seems impossible.
Just a little reminder to those with valuable assets at GoDaddy. Remember, if your 'UK' domain settings are set to privacy, you have zero control over them should you try to override them from your Nominet account in the event of a catastrophic event. For some reason, GoDaddy can override Nominet's ability to see your domains at their end and you won't even see them in your account. Another example of Nominet's complete incompetence at managing the UK domain space in my tiny little (of no relevance) opinion. Leave privacy turned on at your peril.
