Following Google’s footsteps, GoDaddy to abandon China – is Dell next?
Addressing the newly enforced website registration policies in China, GoDaddy sees no profitable future in operating there. Through that rule, it has been made mandatory to have business licenses and to provide extensive personal data, including photographs to register a domain in China. Experts speculate that at this point, the high cost of registration, as a side effect of the new rules, is not sustainable to GoDaddy’s business. Though Godaddy will continue supporting the existing .cn domains; they will NOT register Chinese domains anymore.
On the other hand, Dell’s chairman spoke to the media about his conference with the Indian Prime Minister Mr. Manmohan Singh, revealing that they have expressed an intention to settle here in India. Dell intends to move USD 25 billion worth of property out of China into India. At first, rumours stated that Dell was about to completely pull their business from China and move to India, but this was later refuted by the Senior Manager of Dell. Nevertheless, a global company planning to shift property amounting to 25 Billion USD is no small matter. It seems likely that the current socio-political climate in China had a great deal of impact on this big decision.