Domain registrar and web hosting provider Go Daddy announced on Thursday that with the registration of domain name RulesOfSaving.com, the company now has a portfolio of an industry record 30 million domain names.

The milestone demonstrates that despite a struggling US economy, the Internet market is thriving considerably. Forrester Research forecasts online spending in 2008 will increase by 17 percent while Go Daddy anticipates even higher numbers.

The company’s projections, based on recent months, reveal a 72 percent increase this year over last, in terms of revenue generated by customers with websites powered by its e-commerce tool, Quick Shopping Cart.

“These numbers really demonstrate how the Internet is alive and well, even in these rough financial times,” says Bob Parsons, Go Daddy CEO and founder. “We knew from the start, helping make it easy and affordable for people to get online would make a difference. That’s why we developed products our customers wanted, priced them right and then backed them up with personal customer service… and, well the rest is history.”

Go Daddy claims it has a 45 percent market share of active, new domain names and is nearly three times the size of its closest competitor.

Meanwhile, ICAAN announced it will decide this week on whether to offer endless variations on domain addresses, as only 17 percent of the original four billion domain addresses are still available.

To meet the demands of this rapid growth, the Scottsdale, Arizona-based Go Daddy says it has expanded its workforce to four offices in Arizona, plus one each in Colorado, Iowa and Washington, D.C.

The company says it employs more than 2,000 people, which has increased by approximately 33 percent in less than three years.