Revelations of a scheme at GoDaddy that involved an employee bidding in auctions, were severely downplayed by the company’s executives.
GoDaddy’s management stated that the effects of the employee’s activity did not affect a substantial number of auctions, and that the resulting bids would have been in the same low dollar range even without the employee’s involvement.
The problem isn’t the amounts, or the number of times that GoDaddy employee broke corporate protocol, and violated ethics. The real issue, is the loss of trust that goes hand in hand with such activity, when a company fails to safe-guard its public and corporate processes.
Almost two years ago, domain investors broke a new hole to NameJet, when a shill-bidding scandal implicated active sellers, their friends, and an API gone wild. At the time, NameJet officers performed an internal investigation, and declared changes to the platform’s bidding processes.
In that case, just like with GoDaddy’s current incident, no third party was hired to assess the situation, something that was deemed necessary in the case of SnapNames a decade ago.
At the time, Rust Consulting was hired by the company to investigate all activities impartially, and the end result was the declaration of major fraud by the company’s officer at the time, who used the moniker “Hank Alvarez” or halvarez. Rust Consulting helped SnapNames avoid a class action lawsuit, by performing a thorough investigation and eventually issuing refund checks in the tens of thousands of dollars collectively.
GoDaddy announced the results of their own investigation, with no indication on exactly how it was performed. Should GoDaddy be trusted with cleaning its own home efficiently, or should a third party consultant like Rust Consulting be hired for the job?
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