GoDaddy To Cease Registering Domain Names In China

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Not a good week for China and American businesses, it seems. GoDaddy is the third company to publicly bail on their Chinese operations this week (after Google and Dell). GoDaddy is the world’s largest ICANN domain registrar in the world, and is leaving China over concerns over new restrictions placed on domains being registered from within China.

New government requirements in China say that applicants applying for a domain name must provide considerable personal data about themselves, including even, a photograph of themselves. GoDaddy says that China is attempting to gain more control over web content in their country as well as further their surveillance web on their country.

GoDaddy feels that China’s new policies put Chinese citizens who register domains at risk. They also feel that the new policies will have a “chilling effect” on new domains and will hurt GoDaddy’s business in China. GoDaddy says that Chinese websites registered through them are more often targeted by the Chinese government for being taken down for being “deemed not appropriate”. Likewise, GoDaddy says that getting a reason for these takedowns is impossible. Christine N. Jones, legal counsel for GoDaddy, said on the Chinese government’s takedowns of GoDaddy sites, “When our sites get shut down in China, we are never told why . . . and it’s impossible to know why.”

Although many pundits are claiming that GoDaddy and Dell are falling in line behind Google in ceasing their Chinese operations, Ms. Jones went on to say that they were unrelated. “With all due respect, this has nothing to do with Google.”

In case you missed the news, Google will be closing their Google China unit, and are redirecting users to the Hong Kong Chinese site. We reported today that Dell is moving some $25 billion in manufacturing operations to India from China because China isn’t a “conductive environment to business”. Time to short the Chinese yuan on the currency markets?