What changed in this filing

/stocks — the workspaceLOADING

Item 1. Business

2021-02-19 compared with 2020-02-21 · 152 added, 160 removed, 313 unchanged (50% of the section changed)

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Our 20.6 million customers are passionate everyday entrepreneurs with vibrant ideas, who are determined to make their way in the world and to transform their ideas into something meaningful.

We are a leading provider of cloud-based solutions, delivering simple, easy-to-use products, services and outcome-driven, personalized guidance to small businesses, individuals, organizations, developers, designers and domain investors.

This enables our customers to name their venture, build their website, establish and manage their online marketing, and get branded email.

We are a leading provider of cloud-based solutions, delivering simple, easy-to-use products, and outcome-driven, personalized guidance to small businesses, individuals, organizations, developers, designers and domain investors, enabling our customers to name their venture, build their website, establish and manage their online marketing, sell their products and services and get branded email.

This often starts with the most intimate of brand considerations—their domain name—and expands through our website building, hosting, social media, security, productivity and other services offerings.

As our customers grow through their entrepreneurial journey, we provide applications and access to relevant third-party products and platforms helping them connect to their customers and manage and grow their businesses.

As our customers' entrepreneurial needs evolve, we provide applications and access to relevant third-party products and platforms, helping them connect to their customers and manage and grow their businesses.

Our product offerings continue to evolve to meet the needs of our customers, and through the recent additions of GoDaddy Registry and Poynt, we now offer a high-performance back-end registry technology platform and a suite of payment systems, including point-of-sale systems.

What it means to be online has evolved from having a static website to a mobile-ready, responsive website integrated with social channels, search engines, reputation platforms and e-commerce marketplaces.

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At GoDaddy, we believe our customers should have both great technology and great customer support.

Engaging with our customers in a proactive, consultative way helps them knock down the technology hurdles they face, through personalized guidance via phone and digital experiences.

Engaging with our customers in a proactive, consultative way through personalized guidance via phone and digital experiences helps them knock down the technology hurdles they face.

Through the thousands of conversations we have with our customers every day, we receive valuable feedback enabling us to continually evolve our products and solutions and respond to their changing needs.

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We live by the same principles that enable our customers' ideas to survive and thrive:

hard work, perseverance, conviction, an obsession with customer satisfaction and a belief that no one can do it better.

hard work, perseverance, conviction, an obsession with customer satisfaction and a belief that no one else can do it better.

We take responsibility for driving successful outcomes which we believe has been a key factor in enabling our customer and revenue growth.

We believe we have one of the most recognized Internet brands in the U.S.

and our international awareness continues to rapidly increase as we've entered into new markets.

and our international awareness continues to rapidly increase as we have entered into new markets.

Our stable and predictable business model is driven by efficient customer acquisition, high customer retention rates and increasing lifetime spend.

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In 2020, we generated $3,776 million in total bookings, up 11.0% from $3,401 million in 2019, and we generated $3,317 million of revenue, up 11.0% from $2,988 million in 2019.

Our Opportunity and Advantages

Our Opportunity—Empowering the Everyday Entrepreneur

Our customers represent a large and diverse market which we believe is largely underserved by other Internet companies.

According to the U.S.

Small Business Administration, there were approximately 30.8 million small businesses in 2016.

Based on data from the 2016 U.S.

Census Bureau and the U.S.

Small Business Administration, over 90% of small businesses have fewer than five employees and approximately 25 million, or over 76%, of small businesses were non-employer firms.

Furthermore, the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity Report estimated that in 2017 there were approximately 540,000 new business owners created each month in the U.S.

Around the world, there are more than 500 million micro, small and medium enterprises, according to a study performed by the International Finance Corporation and McKinsey Company (defined as one to 250

employees) worldwide.

We believe our addressable market extends beyond small businesses and includes individuals and organizations, such as universities, community organizations, charities and hobbyists.

Our customers are consumers themselves, which makes them keenly aware of the need to have an impactful online presence.

While our customers' needs change depending on where they are in their journey, the most common customer needs we serve include:

• Showing up, looking great .

Our customers want to develop an online presence by finding a name that distinctly identifies their business, hobby or passion.

We believe their digital identity includes not just an elegant, mobile-enabled website, but the ability to get found across various search engines, social media platforms and vertical marketplaces.

And while our customers' online identities start with creating and managing these points of presence, their identities are amplified through content generation and the ability to engage and transact online with their customers and audience.

• Getting found in all the right places .

What it means for our customers to be online continues to evolve.

Today, having an effective online presence often means having a combination of:

(i) a secure and content-rich website viewable from any device;

(ii) presence on social media channels (e.g.

Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and WeChat);

(iii) search engines (e.g.

Google) and an increasing number of horizontal marketplaces (e.g.

Yelp and Eventbrite);

(iv) vertical marketplaces (e.g.

Zillow, OpenTable and HomeAdvisor);

and (v) e-commerce platforms (e.g.

Amazon, eBay, Etsy).

• Interacting with customers as they grow their business.

Our customers need to communicate with their existing customers and find new ones across a landscape that is fragmented in both form and function.

They have distinct needs in (i) branded email communication, originating with domain registration and email creation through an email client;

(ii) online marketing in a variety of content types and channels;

(iii) online commerce with reservation and scheduling, product catalogs and e-commerce and payment processing capabilities;

(iv) messaging capabilities across SMS, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and others;

(v) email marketing for audience engagement;

and (vi) telephony, for inbound and outbound voice communication.

Surrounding these channels and tactics, our customers also need easy-to-use tools to run their businesses.

• Technology that is reliable, secure, performant and evolves with their needs.

Our various customer types need a simple platform and set of tools enabling their domain, website, marketing and other solutions to easily work together as their ideas grow and become more complex.

The right platform can meet the needs of entrepreneurs, who may not be technologically savvy, and our Partners, who have more complex requirements, as well as all the customers in between that have a range of needs and sophistication.

All the while, our customers expect reliable products and want to be confident their digital presence is secure, even as they insert customization that can create vulnerabilities.

Our customers work on their ideas whenever and however they can and need solutions fitting their lifestyle and schedule.

• Connecting with a real person when they need help.

Our customers sometimes need guidance to set up a website, launch a new feature or try something new.

They need real people who are available 24/7/365 and in the manner that works best for them, whether by phone, by chat or in community forums.

In addition to guiding our customers along the way, we also provide support by handling the most difficult and arduous tasks for them through a collection of managed service offerings.

• Affordable solutions .

Our customers often have limited financial resources and are unable to make large, upfront investments in the latest technology.

Our customers need affordable solutions to level the playing field with the tools to look and act like bigger ventures.

Serving these customer needs creates a deep relationship, where we are looked to as not just a solution provider, but also a guide and partner to their entrepreneurial journey.

This makes for a favorable business and economic model, aligning the interests of GoDaddy and our customer.

Our Advantages

Our customers have many roles in their venture;

they simultaneously run marketing, accounting, service delivery operations, customer service, people operations and many other tasks.

Time is their most valuable resource and complexity is their hindrance;

they want an impactful online presence, but may not have the time and skills to make that happen.

Our goal is to be a trusted partner to these entrepreneurs, bringing together the technology, ease of use and care necessary to bring their ideas to life online.

Therefore, we believe the following strengths provide us with competitive advantages in serving their needs:

Seamlessly Intuitive Experiences.

Our customers often self-identify as non-technical and inexperienced in a variety of areas like marketing, content creation and customer management.

This often manifests in our customers not having the expertise to take full advantage of powerful tools, due to complexity and an over-abundance of functionality.

Combined with the great degree of fragmentation of experiences, channels and mediums on the Internet, our customers can often be overwhelmed as they attempt to bring their idea online.

We believe that the antidote to this complexity is to radically simplify our solutions and services into seamlessly intuitive experiences.

GoDaddy has the two leading website building content management systems (CMS) with Websites + Marketing and Managed WordPress.

With Managed WordPress, we dramatically reduce the complexity in provisioning, managing and customizing the WordPress CMS.

We do this by wrapping the WordPress CMS with our own security tools (web application firewall (WAF), content delivery network (CDN) and secure sockets layer (SSL)), design tools, plugin pre-installs at initiation and automatic, managed updates.

In Websites + Marketing, our own captive CMS, we incorporate seamlessly intuitive experiences by uniting marketing, content, commerce and customer management tools into single experiences.

We also seek to leverage data and insights to personalize the products and experiences of our customers as well as tailor our solutions and marketing efforts to each of our customer groups.

We are constantly seeking to improve our website, marketing programs and Customer Care to intelligently respond to where customers are in their lifecycle and identify their specific product needs.

This allows us to interact more frequently with our customers.

We intend to continue investing in our technology and data platforms to further enable our personalization efforts.

Sage Guidance.

Our customers deeply value expertise and know-how, which has been part of the GoDaddy DNA through our GoDaddy Guides since our founding.

Our customers' needs are highly individualized and tailored to their ventures, which makes operating a guidance experience – at scale – a substantial form of differentiation.

In recent years, we've extended this competency into a number of new interfaces and subject matters, which are taking the insights gained from inbound calls and inserting them tactically into places that are driving higher engagements with GoDaddy.

For example, within our Websites + Marketing platform, we are now creating custom, tailored action plans for our customers as they seek to market their business in a number of different channels based on the type of venture they have and their geography.

Additionally, our Websites + Marketing platform has recently launched an in-editor chat experience with our GoDaddy Guides, who are able to strategically assist our customers through aesthetic decisions and help them when they hit speed bumps.

And finally, we have significantly increased the passively-engageable content available to our customers, through a number of different content forms and across platforms like YouTube and Instagram.

Activating our Community.

GoDaddy is one of the largest aggregations of paying small businesses and ventures in the world, with a wealth of diversity across verticals, life stages, sophistication and geographies.

Our customers gain a lot when they're able to learn from one-another's experiences and benefit from each others' skills, but the challenge is that the exchange of information is cumbersome.

We aim to activate our community and lower the barriers for connection, for the betterment of our customers.

This occurs in discreet areas of our business today – such as in our domain aftermarket and GoDaddy Websites + Marketing's InSight platform – and it is something we're investing behind for the future.

The GoDaddy Platform

Our Customers and Solutions

We built GoDaddy to serve our customers by providing elegant, easy-to-use cloud-based products on a single technology platform wrapped with personalized guidance.

Our goal is to be a trusted partner to our customers, bringing together the technology, ease of use and care necessary to bring their ideas to life online.

Our Customers

We serve three customer populations:

Independents, Partners and Domain Registrars and Investors.

We serve several customer populations:

Independents, Partners, Domain Registrars and Investors, other Registrars and Corporate Domain Portfolio owners.

While the products we provide to these populations overlap, we also seek to address the meaningful differences in their journeys, what they value, their ultimate goals and how they communicate with the rest of the world.

Our largest population are Independents, which are vastly micro-businesses and non-commercial endeavors.

Our largest population is Independents, which are vastly micro-businesses and non-commercial endeavors.

Independents have an entrepreneurial spirit, strong work ethic and, above all, passion for their ideas, yet their specific needs vary depending on the type and stage of their ideas.

Independents range from individuals who have an idea and those thinking about starting a business, to established ventures needing help attracting customers, growing their sales, managing their presence or expanding their operations.

Most Independents have fewer than five employees and most self-identify as having little to no

technology or design skills.

Most Independents have fewer than five employees and most self-identify as having little to no technology or design skills.

They need our help to create a unique and secure digital identity, especially the more technical aspects of their presence.

While our customers have differing degrees of resources and technical capabilities, they all share a desire to find tools to help them bring their ideas to life, enhance connections with their audience and find new customers.

Our second largest population are our Partners, who are website designers and developers building websites on behalf of businesses and non-commercial organizations.

Our second largest population is our Partners, who are website designers and developers building websites on behalf of businesses and non-commercial organizations.

We estimate that half of all website builds occur through a third party, such as our Partners, on a do-it-for-you basis.

Our Partners are often freelancers, moonlighters or part of small website design agencies and often have website design as one of multiple streams of income.

Our Partners generally have more technical acumen and look for tools that provide greater amounts of flexibility, such as the WordPress CMS.

Our Partners generally have more technical acumen and look for tools that provide greater amounts of flexibility, such as the WordPress content management system (CMS).

While Partners have a need for technical depth and flexibility, they also benefit from our simplicity and guidance as tools to increase their throughput and maximize the use of their time, including client-management tools.

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We support a variety of control panels and content management tools favored by Partners including cPanel, Plesk, Drupal, Joomla and more.

As the largest global host of WordPress sites, many of our recent investments have focused on extending our reach into the WordPress community.

Our final population is Domain Registrars and Investors.

As one of the largest global hosts of WordPress sites, many of our recent investments have focused on extending our reach into the WordPress community.

Our third largest population is Domain Registrars and Investors.

Domain registrars are organizations that have their own domain registration offerings, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), but who use our domain registration and management platform.

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We have made significant investments in the localization of our service offerings, as 45% of our customers are located in international markets (notably Canada, India, the United Kingdom (U.K.) and Australia).

And, while not a standalone product, our GoDaddy Guides consist of nearly 7,300 specialists worldwide who are available 24/7/365 and provide care to customers who have different levels of technical sophistication.

And, while not a standalone product, our GoDaddy Guides consist of approximately 6,300 specialists worldwide who are available 24/7/365 and provide care to customers who have different levels of technical sophistication.

Every great idea needs a great name and GoDaddy is the leading global naming service.

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We are the global market leader in domain name registration, with more than 82 million domains under management as of December 31, 2020 and, based on information reported in VeriSign's Domain Name Industry Brief, we held over 22% of the approximately 371 million domain names registered worldwide as of September 30, 2020.

As of December 31, 2019, approximately 90% of our customers had purchased a domain from us, and as of December 31, 2019, we had more than 79 million domains under management.

As of December 31, 2020, approximately 88% of our customers had purchased a domain from us.

In 2020, 2019 and 2018, we generated approximately 46%, 45% and 46% of our total revenue, respectively, from sales of our domain products.

In addition, GoDaddy Registry provides a high-performance back-end registry technology platform with a portfolio of top-level domains including .biz, .co, .in, .nyc, and .us.

Our primary domains product offerings are:

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Our primary registration offering relies heavily on our search, discovery and recommendation tools which enable our customers to find a name matching their needs.

We also sell domain registrations through relationships with third-party resellers.

We also sell domain registrations through relationships with third-party resellers and we provide back-end registry services supporting more than 215 TLDs.

Aftermarket .

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Our aftermarket platform is designed to enable the seamless purchase and sale of an already registered domain name through an online auction, an offer and counter-offer transaction or a "buy now" transaction.

Over the last five years, we have acquired more than 750,000 domain names to increase the inventory available to our customers.

We maintain a portfolio of more than 1.1 million domains, providing a diverse inventory available to our customers.

Our GoDaddy Investor mobile application helps investors watch and bid on domains at auction and stay on top of their current bids, all from their mobile devices.

We operate a cross-registrar network that automates transaction execution across registrars thereby reducing the time required to complete a transaction.

We receive a percentage of the sales price for each domain sold.

Domain Name Add-Ons .

Domain name add-ons are features a customer can add to a domain name registration.

Our domain name privacy product allows our customers to register a domain name on an "unlisted" basis helping prevent privacy intrusions, deter domain-related spam and allow our customers to confidentially secure a domain for an unannounced product, service or idea.

Domain name add-ons are typically purchased concurrently with domain name registrations and have low costs associated with their delivery.

Domain name add-ons are features typically purchased concurrently with domain name registrations and have low costs associated with their delivery.

In addition, where permissible, privacy features are included at no cost with every domain registered with GoDaddy.

Domain names with this privacy feature are registered on an “unlisted” basis to help protect personal information, deter domain-related spam, and allow our customers to confidentially secure a domain for an unannounced product, service or idea.

Hosting and Presence

Bringing an idea to life online requires a presence.

GoDaddy Websites + Marketing, WordPress hosting and other GoDaddy offerings enable anyone to create an elegant website or online store, for both desktop and mobile, regardless of technical skill.

GoDaddy Websites + Marketing, Managed WordPress hosting and other GoDaddy offerings enable anyone to create an elegant website or e-commerce enabled online store, for both desktop and mobile, regardless of technical skill.

Our products, powered by a unified cloud platform, enable our customers to get found online by helping to enhance the information on their website and extending their website and its content to where they need to be, from search engine results (e.g.

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Yelp), all from one location.

For more technically-sophisticated web designers, developers and customers, we provide high-performance, flexible hosting and security products that can be used with a variety of open source design tools.

more technically-sophisticated web designers, developers and customers, we provide high-performance, flexible hosting and security products that can be used with a variety of open source design tools as well as Managed WordPress.

We design these solutions to be easy to use, effective, reliable, flexible and at a great value.

We offer a variety of hosting and presence products enabling our customers to create and manage their digital identity, or in the case of Partners, the digital identities of their end-customers.

In each of 2019, 2018 and 2017, we derived approximately 38% of our total revenue from sales of our hosting and presence products.

In 2020, 2019 and 2018, we derived approximately 36%, 38% and 38% of our total revenue, respectively, from sales of our hosting and presence products.

Our primary hosting products are:

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Websites + Marketing .

Websites + Marketing is an easy-to-use, do-it-yourself mobile-optimized online tool enabling customers, irrespective of their technical skills, to build effective websites and online stores.

Websites + Marketing is an easy-to-use, do-it-yourself mobile-optimized online tool enabling customers, irrespective of their technical skills, to build effective websites and e-commerce enabled online stores.

We offer a variety of plans, with pricing dependent on business and marketing features.

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Both are integrated into our social and email marketing tools, to help customers generate more business.

Our Websites + Marketing product line includes a range of marketing tools and services designed to help businesses acquire and engage customers.

Our Websites + Marketing product line includes a range of marketing tools and services designed to help businesses acquire and engage customers and create content.

These capabilities are available in an integrated offering with our website and commerce tools, or as a stand-alone for customers using other website content-management systems.

The tools are designed for busy customers who may lack experience with online marketing, focusing on ease of use, mobile experience and delivering business results.

The tools are designed for busy customers who may lack experience with online marketing, focusing on ease of use, mobile experience and

delivering business results.

For example, Over, a mobile application we offer, allows our customers to grow their brands by easily creating impactful visual content for any platform online.

Search Engine Optimization helps our customers get their websites found on major search sites using a simple step-by-step wizard with targeted recommendations on which search phrases are most likely to drive traffic to a customer's site.

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We offer Microsoft Office 365 in multiple plans ranging from email with calendar and contacts connected to a custom domain to a full suite of productivity tools, including file sharing and full desktop versions of Microsoft productivity applications, including Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

For customers wanting to protect their email data, we offer an

email backup service, and for customers needing to comply with regulatory requirements, we offer email add-on services such as HIPAA-enabled email, encryption services (in partnership with ProofPoint) and archiving services (in partnership with Barracuda).

For customers wanting to protect their email data, we offer an email backup service, and for customers needing to comply with regulatory requirements, we offer email add-on services such as HIPAA-enabled email, encryption services (in partnership with ProofPoint), archiving services (in partnership with Barracuda) and advanced e-mail security.

We help make Microsoft Office 365 installation easy, allowing customers to get up and running in minutes, including "do-it-for-me" migrations services to move customers' existing email data to Office 365 accounts

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We also offer single and multi-line VoIP phone systems, IP-enabled phones, virtual phone numbers, virtual receptionist services, customizable phone tree, follow-me call forwarding and fax-on-demand.

GoDaddy Guides

We operate an industry-leading team of GoDaddy Guides that also drives bookings.

We give our customers much more than typical customer support.

Our team is unique, blending personalized guidance with the ability to evaluate our customers' needs, which allows us to help and advise them as well as drive incremental bookings.

Our GoDaddy Guide team contributed approximately 16% of our total bookings in 2019.

Our customers respond to our personalized approach with high marks for customer satisfaction.

Our proactive guidance model is a key component helping create long-term customer relationships, which is reflected in our high retention rates.

We believe our highly-rated GoDaddy Guide team is distinctive and essential to the lifetime value proposition we offer our customers.

We continue to invest in our GoDaddy Guides, including investing to expand our services, improve the quality of our resources and introduce enhanced tools and processes across our expanding global footprint.

Our GoDaddy Guide team operates through a variety of channels to provide tailored and timely support to our customers, handling approximately 19 million contacts in 2019.

Our customers can choose their preferred guidance channel, including proactive and reactive chat and phone support.

In 2019, we expanded these channels to include WhatsApp, WeChat and SMS offerings, as well as in our digital product experiences, where we provide consultative engagements.

We take a consultative approach to our customer interactions, acting as a trusted partner to answer their questions, to guide them through technical solutions, to offer real-time product suggestions best suited to their needs and to support them at each phase of their lifecycle.

The effectiveness of our model is reflected in the high ratings we receive from our customers, the bookings generated by our GoDaddy Guides and strong customer referrals.

Our Opportunity and Advantages

Our Opportunity—Empowering the Everyday Entrepreneur

Our customers represent a large and diverse market that we believe is largely underserved by other Internet companies.

According to the U.S.

Small Business Administration, there were approximately 30.8 million small businesses in 2016.

Based on data from the 2016 U.S.

Census Bureau and the U.S.

Small Business Administration, over 90% of small businesses have fewer than five employees and approximately 25 million, or over 76%, of small businesses were non-employer firms.

Furthermore, the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity Report estimated that in 2017 there were approximately 540,000 new business owners created each month in the U.S.

We believe our addressable market extends beyond small businesses and includes individuals and organizations, such as universities, community organizations, charities and hobbyists.

Our customers are consumers themselves, which makes them keenly aware of the need to have an impactful online presence.

While our customers' needs change depending on where they are in their journey, the most common customer needs we serve include:

• Showing up, looking great .

Our customers want to develop an online presence by finding a name that distinctly identifies their business, hobby or passion.

We believe their digital identity includes not just an elegant, mobile-enabled website, but the ability to get found across various search engines, social media platforms and vertical marketplaces.

• Getting found in all the right places .

What it means for our customers to be online continues to evolve.

Today, having an effective online presence often means having a combination of:

(i) a secure and content-rich website viewable from any device;

(ii) presence on social media channels (e.g.

Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and WeChat);

(iii) search engines (e.g.

Google) and an increasing number of horizontal marketplaces (e.g.

Yelp and Eventbrite);

(iv) vertical marketplaces (e.g.

Zillow, OpenTable and HomeAdvisor);

and (v) e-commerce platforms (e.g.

Amazon, eBay, Etsy).

• Interacting with customers as they grow their business.

Our customers need to communicate with their existing customers and find new ones across a landscape that is fragmented in both form and function.

They have distinct needs in (i) branded email communication, originating with domain registration and email creation through an email client;

(ii) online marketing in a variety of content types and channels;

(iii) online commerce with reservation and scheduling, product catalogs and e-commerce and payment processing capabilities, including in-person point-of-sale payment processing;

(iv) messaging capabilities across SMS, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and others;

(v) email marketing for audience engagement;

and (vi) telephony, for inbound and outbound voice communication.

Surrounding these channels and tactics, our customers also need easy-to-use tools to run their businesses.

• Technology that is reliable, secure, performant and evolves with their needs.

Our various customer types need a simple platform and set of tools enabling their domain, website, marketing and other solutions to easily work together as their ideas grow and become more complex.

All the while, our customers expect reliable products and want to be confident their digital presence is secure, even as they insert customization that can create vulnerabilities.

Our customers work on their ideas whenever and however they can and need solutions fitting their lifestyle and schedule.

• Connecting with a real person when they need help.

Our customers sometimes need guidance to set up a website, launch a new feature or try something new.

They need real people who are available 24/7/365 and in the manner that works best for them, whether by phone, by chat or in community forums.

In addition to guiding our customers along the way, we also provide support by handling the most difficult and arduous tasks for them through a collection of managed service offerings.

• Affordable solutions .

Our customers often have limited financial resources and are unable to make large, upfront investments in the latest technology.

Our customers need affordable solutions to level the playing field with the tools to look and act like bigger ventures.

Serving these customer needs creates a deep relationship, where we are looked to as not just a solution provider, but also a guide and partner to their entrepreneurial journey.

This makes for a favorable business and economic model, aligning the interests of GoDaddy and our customer.

Our Advantages

Our customers have many roles in their venture;

they simultaneously run marketing, accounting, service delivery operations, customer service, people operations and many other tasks.

Time is their most valuable resource and complexity is their hindrance;

they want an impactful online presence, but may not have the time and skills to make that happen.

Our goal is to be a trusted partner to these entrepreneurs, bringing together the technology, ease of use and care necessary to bring their ideas to life online.

Therefore, we believe the following strengths provide us with competitive advantages in serving their needs:

Seamlessly Intuitive Experiences.

Our customers often self-identify as non-technical and inexperienced in a variety of areas like marketing, content creation and customer management.

Because they may lack the expertise to take full advantage of powerful tools, customers may be overwhelmed as they attempt to bring their idea online.

We believe that the antidote to this complexity is to radically simplify our solutions and services into seamlessly intuitive experiences.

GoDaddy has the two leading website building CMSs with Managed WordPress and Websites + Marketing.

With Managed WordPress, we dramatically reduce the complexity in provisioning, managing and customizing the WordPress CMS.

In Websites + Marketing, our own captive CMS, we incorporate seamlessly intuitive experiences by uniting marketing, content, commerce and customer management tools into a single experience.

We also seek to leverage data and insights to personalize the products and experiences of our customers as well as tailor our solutions and marketing efforts to each of our customer groups.

We are constantly seeking to improve our website, marketing programs and customer care to intelligently respond to where customers are in their lifecycle and identify their specific product needs.

This allows us to interact more frequently with our customers.

We intend to continue investing in our technology and data platforms to further enable our personalization efforts.

Sage Guidance.

Our customers deeply value expertise and know-how, which has been part of the GoDaddy DNA through our GoDaddy Guides since our founding.

Our customers' needs are highly individualized and unique to their ventures, which makes operating a guidance experience – at scale – a substantial form of differentiation.

And finally, we have significantly increased the passively-engageable content available to our customers, through a number of different content forms and across platforms like YouTube and Instagram.

Activating our Community.

GoDaddy is one of the largest aggregations of paying small businesses and ventures in the world, with a wealth of diversity across verticals, life stages, sophistication and geographies.

Our customers gain a lot when they're able to learn from one-another's experiences and benefit from each other's skills, but the challenge is that the exchange of information is cumbersome.

We aim to activate our community and lower the barriers for connection, for the betterment of our customers.

This occurs in discreet areas of our business today – such as in our domain aftermarket and GoDaddy Websites + Marketing's InSight platform – and it is something we're investing in for the future.

Human Capital

Our people embody the same grit and determination as our customers.

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As of December 31, 2020, we had 6,621 employees worldwide, including 3,368 GoDaddy Guides, 1,897 in technology and development, 544 in marketing and advertising and 812 in general and administrative.

Excluded from our employee figures are nearly 3,300 GoDaddy Guides located in Bulgaria, China, Colombia, Germany, India, Mexico, the Philippines, Romania, Spain and the U.K.

who are directly employed by third-party partners, but who are dedicated to GoDaddy on a full time basis.

In addition to our employees, approximately 3,000 GoDaddy Guides located primarily in China, Colombia, India, Mexico, the Philippines and Spain who are directly employed by third-party partners are dedicated to GoDaddy on a full-time basis.

Substantially all of our employees are based in the U.S.

None of our employees are represented by a labor union or are party to any collective bargaining agreement in connection with his or her employment with us.

None of our employees is represented by a labor union or are party to any collective bargaining agreement in connection with his or her employment with us;

however, certain of our employees in Germany are represented by an employee works council pursuant to local regulations.

We actively work to attract a diverse employee population.

We are committed to providing equal opportunity in all aspects of employment and will not tolerate any discrimination, harassment or retaliation.

We actively work to educate our employees and managers on recognizing unconscious bias and received perfect scores on the 2019, 2020 and 2021 Corporate Equality Index administered by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.

Additionally, we publish annual diversity and pay equity data and have achieved our goal of paying men and women in similar jobs at parity across the Company for six consecutive years.

In addition, in 2020, we began publishing pay equity data for different ethnic groups within our U.S.

workforce, and we have achieved pay equity between U.S.

based minority and non-minority employee populations.

We maintain several Employee Resource Groups to drive sponsorship, advocacy, and representation for diverse employee groups, especially those that are historically underrepresented.

We are committed to making progress towards increasing workforce diversity in both technical and non-technical roles.

We are committed to providing fulfilling career development opportunities for our employees.

To support this goal, we conduct regular performance reviews focused on career development for all full-time employees.

Additionally, we conduct an annual GoDaddy Voice employee survey to monitor employee satisfaction and to ensure that they feel connected and engaged with GoDaddy's mission, our customers and their own teams.

GoDaddy Guides

We have nearly 7,300 GoDaddy Guides who provide technical assistance 24/7/365 to customers located around the world.

Our specialists use a consultative approach to advise customers of products best suiting their individual needs.

We have approximately 6,300 GoDaddy Guides who provide technical assistance 24/7/365 to customers located around the world.

Our industry-leading specialists use a consultative approach to advise customers of products best suiting their individual needs.

This ability to provide real-time product suggestions while providing a world-class support experience allows our GoDaddy Guides to provide an impactful contribution to bookings through the sale of product subscriptions.

In each of 2019, 2018 and 2017, at least 15% of our total bookings were generated from the sale of product subscriptions by our GoDaddy Guides.

Approximately 12%, 16%, and 17% of our total bookings in 2020, 2019 and 2018, respectively, were generated from the sale of product subscriptions by our GoDaddy Guides.

Our latest merchandising strategies, such as free trials and an increased mix of monthly product subscriptions, drove more renewal billings to our website and away from the GoDaddy Guides during 2020, which we expect to continue in the future.

Our GoDaddy Guide team operates through a variety of channels to provide tailored and timely support to our customers, handling approximately 19 million contacts in 2020.

Our customers can choose their preferred guidance channel, including proactive and reactive chat and phone support.

In 2020, we expanded these channels to include WhatsApp, WeChat and SMS offerings, as well as in our digital product experiences, where we provide consultative engagements.

As of December 31, 2020, we offered localized products and guidance in over 50 markets.

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Our hiring process is extensive and highly selective, designed to yield individuals who will thrive in our team based on core values, character, work ethic and ability.

Our new guides spend over a month moving from classroom to a live "nesting" environment where they refine their customer and technology skills.

Our new GoDaddy Guides spend over a month moving from classroom to a live "nesting" environment where they refine their customer and technology skills.

With a commitment to life-long learning, we offer extensive classes to our employees spanning leadership, sales, service and technology.

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During the five years ended December 31, 2020, we invested to support our growth with $2,131 million in technology and development expenses.

The growth in our technology and development expenses has been driven primarily by our focus on product development to provide software-driven product experiences such as our website building suite, security, social channel management, second-line telephony, email, domain aftermarket and continued innovation in our domain registration and hosting offerings, among others.

We have built a scalable infrastructure platform allowing us to optimize for economies of scale and enable next-generation hosting architecture for our customers, while investing in faster data centers, improved network connectivity and improved resiliency, both domestically and internationally.

The growth in our technology and development expenses has been driven primarily by our focus on product development to provide software-driven product experiences such as our website building suite, security, commerce, email, domain aftermarket and continued innovation in our domain registration and hosting offerings, among others.

Additionally, we offer Domain Registry and Corporate Domains solutions to our customers.

We have built a scalable infrastructure platform allowing us to optimize for economies of scale and enable next-generation hosting architecture for our customers, while investing in faster, denser and more efficient data centers, improved network connectivity and improved resiliency, both domestically and internationally.

We provide a reliable and secure global platform and infrastructure.

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We have invested heavily in our product development teams as we have expanded the ways we serve our customers to adjust to their changing needs from primarily domain name registration and hosting to a broader spectrum of offerings.

Our primary website building products (Websites + Marketing and Managed WordPress), security suite, email offerings (Microsoft Office 365, Workspaces and Open X-change), social media management, second-line telephony (Smartline) and domain aftermarket each represent significant need states that are complementary to our long-standing offerings and benefit from our strengths as a company in human-infused technology.

Our primary website building products (Websites + Marketing and Managed WordPress), security suite, email offerings (Microsoft Office 365, Workspaces and Open X-change), commerce and domain aftermarket each represent significant need states that are complementary to our long-standing offerings and benefit from our strengths as a company in human-infused technology.

Our product development investments have grown at a significantly higher rate than our physical infrastructure and business system expenses, reflecting our expanding role in enabling our customers' success with a powerful digital presence.

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Hundreds of new gTLDs have been introduced in recent years, expanding the available inventory for us and our customers.

Through GoDaddy Registry, we operate back-end registry management for more than 215 TLDs.

Additionally, we have invested to expand the secondary market to help match buyers to sellers who already own domains.

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and derived approximately 32%, 33% and 35% of our total bookings from international sales in 2020, 2019 and 2018, respectively.

We have built a dedicated team responsible for the internationalization and localization of our core product offerings as well as our Customer Care and marketing efforts, including through our acquisition of Host Europe Group (HEG) in 2017.

We have built a dedicated team responsible for the internationalization and localization of our core product offerings as well as our customer care and marketing efforts, including through our acquisition of Host Europe Group in 2017.

In conjunction with our localization efforts, we added on-the-ground regional teams and increased our country and regional specific marketing spend.

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ICANN is a multi-stakeholder private sector, not-for-profit corporation formed in 1998 for the express purposes of overseeing a number of Internet related tasks, including management of the DNS, allocation of IP addresses, accreditation of domain name registrars and registries and the definition and coordination of policy development for all of these functions.

We are accredited by ICANN as a domain name registrar and thus our ability to offer domain name registration products is subject to our ongoing relationship with, and accreditation by, ICANN.

We are accredited by ICANN as a domain name registrar and registry and thus our ability to offer domain name registration products is subject to our ongoing relationship with, and accreditation by, ICANN.

The regulation of Internet domain names in the U.S.

and in foreign countries is subject to change.

For example, in 2016, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, an agency of the U.S.

Department of Commerce, transitioned oversight of key Internet domain name functions to the global multi-stakeholder community.

ccTLD Authorities .

The regulation of ccTLDs is governed by national regulatory agencies of the country underlying the specific ccTLDs, such as China (.cn), Canada (.ca) and the U.K.

The regulation of ccTLDs is governed by national regulatory agencies of the country underlying the specific ccTLDs, such as the U.S.

(.us), Colombia (.co), China (.cn), Canada (.ca) and the U.K.

Our ability to sell ccTLDs is dependent on our and our partners' abilities to maintain accreditation in good standing with these various international authorities.

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federal and various state and foreign governments have adopted or proposed limitations on, and requirements associated with, the collection, distribution, use, storage and security of personal information of individuals.

In addition, in the European Union (E.U.) member states and certain other countries outside the U.S., data protection is more highly regulated and rigidly enforced.

has enacted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which took full effect on May 25, 2018, superseding the 1995 European Union Data Protection Directive.

In addition, in several jurisdictions in which we operate, data protection is more highly regulated and rigidly enforced.

For example, the European Union (E.U.) has enacted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), superseding the 1995 European Union Data Protection Directive.

The GDPR includes stringent operational requirements for processors and controllers of personal data, for companies established in the E.U.

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if they collect, use, or otherwise process personal data, including payment card information, imposes significant penalties for non-compliance and has broader extra-territorial effect.

With our acquisition of HEG, and as we conduct and expand our business across Europe and elsewhere, we expect compliance with these regulatory schemes to be more burdensome and costly for us.

In addition, California recently enacted the California Consumer Privacy Act (the CCPA) that will, among other things, require covered companies to provide new disclosures to California consumers and afford such consumers new abilities to opt-out of certain sales of personal information.

The CCPA went into effect on January 1, 2020;

enforcement of the CCPA by the California Attorney General is anticipated to begin on July 1, 2020.

As we continue to expand our operations in Europe and elsewhere, we expect compliance with these regulatory schemes to be more burdensome and costly for us.

In addition, California recently enacted the California Consumer Privacy Act (the CCPA), which was further modified by the passage of the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) in the November 2020 election.

The CCPA, as modified, requires covered companies to provide new disclosures to California consumers and afford such consumers new abilities to opt-out of certain sales of personal information.

Laws and regulations relating to our activities are unsettled in many jurisdictions, or may prove difficult or impossible to comply with in some jurisdictions.

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We rely on a combination of trademark, patent, copyright and trade secret laws, confidentiality and access-related procedures and safeguards and contractual provisions to protect our proprietary technologies, confidential information, brands and other intellectual property.

We have also developed, acquired or licensed proprietary technologies for use in our business.

As of December 31, 2020, we had 314 issued patents in the U.S.

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In addition, we have a trademark and service mark enforcement program pursuant to which we monitor applications filed by third parties to register trademarks and service marks that may be confusingly similar to ours, as well as the use of our major brand names in social media, domain names and other Internet sites.

Despite our efforts to preserve and protect our intellectual property, unauthorized third parties may attempt to copy, reverse engineer or otherwise obtain access to our proprietary rights, and competitors may attempt to develop solutions that could compete with us in the markets we serve.

Unauthorized disclosure of our confidential information or proprietary technologies by our employees or third parties could also occur.

The risk of unauthorized use of our proprietary and intellectual property rights may increase as we continue to expand outside of the U.S.

Third-party infringement claims are also possible in our industry, especially as functionality and features expand, evolve and overlap across industries.

Third parties, including non-practicing patent holders, have from time to time claimed, and could claim in the future, that our processes, technologies or websites infringe patents they now hold or might obtain or be issued in the future.

Corporate Information

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Compared sentence by sentence after normalising whitespace, quotation marks, case and digits, so re-formatting and restated figures do not read as changed language. Wording changes appear as one removal and one addition. The current filing and the prior one are authoritative.

What changed 10-K

Item 1. Business