Will Google go after GoDaddy?

Some industry observers are speculating that Google may be interested in buying GoDaddy. When Google was accredited as a registrar two years ago it denied that it was planning to make a serious run at the registration business. But now there is renewed speculation that Google might add a big registrar to its growing portfolio of Internet businesses.

Meanwhile, AP reports that the number of domain name registrations worldwide has reached 138 million, a 31 percent increase from last year. The ".com" suffix continues to be the most popular, with about 55 million registrations, but country-code domains such as ".fr" for France, are growing fast. There are now more than 51 million country-code registrations, a 36 percent increase from last year. Germany's ".de" is the leading country code and the second-most popular suffix overall, followed by ".net" in third place. The United Kingdom's ".uk," China's ".cn" and ".org" are among the other leading domain name suffixes.