For the past two-and-a-half month, Google has dominated the conversation around Internet restrictions in China. But today, domain registrar Go Daddy took center stage.
The company’s general counsel detailed to lawmakers a series of escalating attacks and onerous data-collection requirements from the Chinese government that ultimately convinced Go Daddy to stop issuing new .cn domains. Datamation has the details.
WASHINGTON — Just two days after Google made good on its promise to stop censoring search results in China, Go Daddy, the world’s leading domain name registrar, has followed suit, pledging on Wednesday to stop issuing new .cn Internet addresses.
“We have decided to discontinue offering .cn domain names at this time,” Go Daddy General Counsel Christine Jones told members of the Legislative Executive Commission on China, a panel that includes members of both the House and Senate.
Jones and Alan Davidson, Google’s U.S. director of public policy, told the lawmakers that cyber attacks emanating from China have spiked in the past year, and both companies have concluded that Chinese Internet regulations have created a hostile business environment within the country.
Jones said that Go Daddy was hit with a variant of the attacks in December that Google described the following month when it pledged to stop censoring search results in China and threatened to close its operations in the country.