Verio had ranked number nine in June. A long-time technological innovating company, at the end of June, Verio added Wendy Pearson as senior director of marketing and communications to spearhead its marketing initiatives. Hoping to breathe new life into the brand, Pearson explained Verio’s more focused marketing strategy to theWHIR at HostingCon 2008.

In second place, Italy-based Tiscali operates its main site from Apache running on a Linux operating system. Tiscali markets its offerings mostly in Italy, the UK, Germany, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands. Tiscali announced Thursday it has partnered with data center operator Equinix, helping to strengthen its presence in the French and German markets.

Their core business is providing internet access, with two million ADSL subscribers in the UK and Italy. Tiscali had the most reliable hosting company site in February this year.

Out of July’s top ten hosting companies, six run Linux on their main sites, including Verio and Tiscali. New York Internet uses FreeBSD and Go Daddy uses Windows Server 2003.

Netcraft’s ranking system is based on the number of failed requests. With performance measurements are made at 15-minute intervals from separate points on the globe, Netcraft measures the response times and averages the results each day. The percentage of failed requests, according to Netcraft, is more important to customers than outages on hosting companies’ own sites because it gives a pointer to reliability of routing.

Go Daddy Domains Canada is offering .ca domain names at competitive prices, around the clock customer support and the opportunity to receive additional products and services at no additional charge, including a blog builder, online photo album and free email.

“Offering .ca lets our Canadian customers have all their domain names in one place,” says Bob Parsons, Go Daddy CEO and founder. “This gives Canadians the benefits of our low prices, unmatched customer service and support for all of their domains.”

As part of the Canada expansion, Go Daddy Domains Canada recently opened its office in Toronto, Ontario. Go Daddy currently has 5.5 million customers in Canada, but the domain registrar says it is hoping to further expand that customer base.

According to Byron Holland, president and CEO of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority of Canada, .ca is showing an enormous growth with more than one million .ca domain name registrations and a 20 percent annual growth rate.

Holland says Go Daddy offering of “.ca services in Canada will benefit the Canadian customers and will foster the Canadian Internet presence.”

The .CA extension is available to Canadian residents and others who meet the Canadian Presence Requirements.

Go Daddy says within the first 24 hours of registration, it signed up more than 20,000 .me domain names, making it the most successful new domain launch in the company’s history.

Requests for .me registrations were so high, apparently, that at one point it began delaying Go Daddy’s website. But the company says it immediately began deploying more servers to withstand the spike in traffic and within a couple of hours, the website resumed normal operations.

Nevertheless, because of the delay, some customers ended up registering domain names that were already taken or reserved by the .me registry before the launch, says the company. However, once the site stabilized, Go Daddy began notifying customers of the invalid registrations and started processing refunds.

“In spite of a few early difficulties GoDaddy.com successfully processed a huge, record-setting level of registrations,” says Bob Parsons, founder and CEO of Go Daddy. “To the best of our knowledge, there have never been more registrations handled in one day during the ordinary course of businesses by any registrar in history. It’s important to note, that in addition to the .me onslaught we also successfully processed our normal business which averages one registration every second.”

The .me extension was assigned to Montenegro as a county code after it became an independent nation in June 2006. However, the Montenegro government decided .me would be operated as a generic name after considering the potential worldwide wide appeal for the extension. Go Daddy says .me is suited to “individuals or businesses looking to uniquely express themselves online with a podcast, blog, online photo album or website dedicated to their interests.”

In light of the popularity the ccTLD has garnered thus far, web hosting provider Easyspace also announced on Monday it has begun offering .me domain registrations through its website. Easyspace says it is one of only a handful of UK-based registrars selling .me domain names.

The company recently sponsored another NASCAR event, the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series.

Go Daddy is the official broadcast sponsor for the NASCAR Napa Auto Parts 200, which will be aired on TSN from Montreal on August 2 at 3 p.m. EST.

The upcoming road course competition will feature Canadian popular Canadian driver Ron Fellows behind the wheel of the Dale Earnhardt, Jr.-designed No. 5 Go Daddy Chevrolet. Both Earnhardt, Jr. and Mark Martin have competed in the car in previous races, but this will mark Fellows’ debut.

“You could say the stars aligned for this Montreal race,” says Bob Parsons, Go Daddy CEO and founder. “Ron Fellows is a fan favorite in Canada. He’ll be in our Go Daddy car and he’s right at home driving a road course. The broadcast sponsorship is the icing on the cake.”

Parent company Go Daddy Group is using the sponsorship to coincide with its entry into the Canadian market with its new subsidiary, Go Daddy Domains Canada. Go Daddy currently has 5.5 million customers in Canada, but the company is hoping to further expand that customer base.

Go Daddy Domains Canada recently opened its office in Ontario, Canada.

Posted on a NamePros.com message board on June 20, it was originally reported by Domain Name Wire editor Andrew Allemann that Go Daddy employee Adam Dicker had outbid another poster on the domain name spyware.us in what some members considered an unethical business practice.

Go Daddy released a statement this week announcing the company’s new policy. Go Daddy General Counsel Christine Jones said, “To ensure customer confidence and to avoid any possible future questions of impropriety, all GD employees are now and in the future prohibited from participating in TDNAM auctions, purchasing, sales & back orders.”

While measures have been put in place to eliminate the conflict of interest, Go Daddy defends Dicker and his actions. Jones said, “Go Daddy has reviewed the auction and found nothing improper. Adam Dicker’s knowledge on the auction was no different from what any customer coming to our TDNAM site would have had.”

At the time of the controversy surrounding Dicker’s activity, GoDaddy Vice President of public relations Elizabeth Driscoll told Domain Name Wire that there was no policy to forbid employees from engaging in public auctions or registrations, but also noted there are “tools in place to prevent anyone from gaining the opportunity for an unfair advantage in securing a domain name through registration or auction.”

Go Daddy joins competitors SnapNames, Moniker, and NameJet in banning executives from participating in auctions and inflating bid prices.

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.

Congress representatives Lamar Smith, Bart Stupak and Mary Bono Mack introduced legislation Tuesday “to stop rogue internet pharmacies and protect the safety of consumers who fill legitimate prescriptions online,” according to a Go Daddy press release.

Having considerable clout as the world’s largest registrar, Go Daddy sent general counsel Christine Jones to Washington, D.C. where she testified to Members of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security that the scope of illegal online drug businesses is worsening and the US needs to deal with it by passing enforceable laws.

“This isn’t just about people trying to save money on prescription drugs by unknowingly buying counterfeit brand name pills,” Jones said in the press release. “This is about young kids who use their parents’ credit card, tell them they are buying music or video games and instead stock the weekly party with enough ecstasy for them and all their friends. This is very, very serious.”

A 2007 report by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Colombia University found 84 percent of Web sites selling prescription medications do not require a doctor’s prescription.

Outspoken CEO and founder Bob Parsons has been known to hold strong opinions in his blog. He has used his money and influence to help flood victims earlier this month, but made waves back in June 2005 when he said the interrogation methods the US military is using at Guantanamo “are incredibly mild. All of the prisoners receive regular medical attention. In contrast, Americans who are captured in the Middle East have their heads hacked off.” He has since apologized for the statement, but has not stopped using his position to make his opinions known.

The issue of internet pharmacies may be doubly important for Go Daddy, which has costly, round-the-clock monitoring of their hosted web pages to monitor illegal activity. The company’s abuse department suspended more than 1,300 web sites last year that sold drugs “mostly without a prescription and almost always without any age verification or parental oversight required,” according to the press release.

“GoDaddy.com is pleased to support this unique educational seminar to help small business owners and marketing professionals gain a better understanding of search engine marketing,” says Bob Parsons, Go Daddy CEO and founder.

The workshop will feature four of North America’s “most prominent Search Engine Marketing experts,” according to the press release, who will hold separate sessions that cover different aspects of online marketing.

Jason Ferrara, COO of Elixir Interactive will be presenting the “Introduction to Search Engine Marketing” session. Arnie Kuenn, president of Vertical Measures will lead the “SEO Link Building & Web site Publicity” session. Brian Offenberger, CEO of Biz Growth SEO will head up the “Paid Search & Local Markets.” Finally, David Wallace, president and co-founder of SearchRank, will present on “Search Engine Optimization.”

Interested participants can register online here. Anyone wishing to pre-register before June 11 or find additional event information can visit the National Marketing Academy site.

Parsons was awarded the honorary doctorate in Humane Letters last week as he served as the keynote speaker for a commencement ceremony for the Yale Gordon School of Liberal Arts and Merrick School of Business. University president Robert Bogomolny presented Parsons with the degree.

According to a fairly short Wikipedia entry, the “Humane Letters” doctorate is always issued as an honorary degree, usually to individuals who have distinguished themselves in areas other than science, government, religion or literature, for which other specific honorary degrees exist.

According to the understandably favorable Go Daddy press release, Parson’s speech was particularly well received by the crowd of approximately 5,600 people at the Lyric Opera Theatre. A Baltimore Sun article reportedly described his address as “one of the most rousing of this commencement season.”

A video of the commencement ceremony is available on the university’s website.

Parsons is himself hails from Baltimore, and is an alumnus of the University of Baltimre, having graduated magna cum laude with an accounting degree in 1979, after returning from a period spent in Viet Nam as a US marine.

He is one of the hosting business’s most notable personalities, in part because Go Daddy has quickly become the largest hosting provider in the business. But his notoriety is also due in part to his purposeful efforts to court controversy with the company’s television advertisements. And Parsons is personally outspoken, a vocal blogger and more recently an Internet radio host and most recently a video blogger.

Go Daddy announced earlier this month it was sponsoring Cassill in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series at Lowe’s Motor Speedway Charlotte in the North Carolina Lottery Education 200.

Cassill, who registered a href=”http://www.landoncassill.com/”>his website with GoDaddy.com before he was of legal driving age, hopes to win his first checkered flag on Saturday.

He is set to drive the Go Daddy #46 Chevrolet truck Saturday at Mansfield Motorsports Speedway for the Ohio 250, which will be broadcasted at 12:30 p.m. EST on SPEED TV. Cassill will take the wheel again May 30 at the AAA Insurance 200 in Delaware.

Go Daddy has long been associated with the racing world, with its a roster of spokespersons that includes the likes of IndyCar’s Danica Patrick, who has just been secured as a “Go Daddy Girl” through 2009, and NASCAR’s Dale Earnhardt, Jr. The company also recently announced another racing sponsorship event — Sunday’s Indianapolis 500 television broadcast on ABC.