Cvc Acquires Majority Stake in Namecheap for $1.5b
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CVC acquires a majority stake in Namecheap for $1.5B, sparking concerns among users about the potential negative impact of private equity on the company's operations and customer experience.
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Or, without merging companies they can simply change the goal from growth to efficiency and "make do with less" and then that naturally leads to enshitification.
I'm a bit surprised at their revenue numbers considering domain registration is pretty much a commodity at this point. I always assumed non-technical people would first go to a web host/email provider that lets them buy a domain vs. a domain registrar that also supports email and web hosting. Clearly I'd be wrong.
I suppose that web and email hosting, and "security services" constitute a large part of it. Domain registration is not necessarily even the biggest part.
PE strives to make things more efficient from a capital point of view. Business foois making $X in profit, and the PE firm's analysis says the can make X+Y dollars with some changes. This is 'better' because now the capital usage is more efficient and more can be spent in other places - new products, new jobs, new businesses, returns to investors, etc. And of course returns to the PE firm.
In principle an efficient economy is important on a macro scale - if all the business are stuck in how they were doing things 30 years ago then we would have reduced innovation and ultimately less jobs.
In practice there is of course a lot of money that flows back into the PE boss's pockets and.... thats it.
Gandi is a little more expensive, but are consistently excellent. Especially now with their new UX and org support, it's super easy to manage domains from both corporate and personal accounts with one login.
Look forward to Namecheap heading the same way in a few years!
(May have to test the waters at each.)
we are asking a shark to spare their appetite of goodwill to their food.
I hope Mr. Kirkendall would continue to oversea its operations and continue to pay its employs a good salary.
https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salary/Namecheap-Ukraine-Salarie...
It's the same for hosting companies. A single PE firm (Endurance) owns over two dozen hosting and domain firms. The first thing they do is lay off the staff (because they already have outsourced agents) and strip the bits away until it's nothing more than a shell with a name for one of their other platforms.
PE is a cancer, and I don't even know if I can count one that has ever been a net positive for a company. All they care about is extracting more and more until all that's left is a stone.
https://archive.ph/i9vOk
Hopefully it's not too predatory and the owner just wanted to cash out some chips; some corps do okay under private equity (Suse for example) but lots get ripped to shreds...