I wouldn't consider VeriSign and GoDaddy competitors. Verisign is a domain registry, whereas GoDaddy is a domain registrar.
VeriSign also offers large network availability services for much larger clientèle. While GoDaddy offers web hosting and web services for smaller businesses.
I used to work at the abuse department for a large web host and domain registrar. We once received a complaint about an Egyptian forum that was supposedly hosting child pornography. The site was not hosted with us, but we were the domain registrar.
The complainant said that the forum had a secret board where users swapped child porn. They sent several links that did indeed show that child pornography was on the site and domain. However, since we only provided the domain registration, our response to the complainant was to contact the web host.
The complainant replied back with more links. That is when my boss became involved. She had very little experience with dealing with abuse issues, however, she was very vocal about the fact that our company was 'allowing' child pornography. She had us put the domain on "Client hold", which effectively disables the domain, removing the name servers from the registry. Afterwards, she scolded me and my two other colleagues for not taking the correct action (even though we were following our SOP based on our terms of service). Even the owners of the company heard about the situation and were glad that the site was shut down.
A week after, the complainant emailed us to thank us for taking down his competitors forum.
Very good analysis there. I wonder whether # of eyeballs is more important that accurate ranking algorithms. Viewers are washed, rinsed and asked to repeat.
I used to work at the abuse department for a large web host. In these cases, we would contact the site owner and provide them with a set amount of days to either remove the material, contact the complainant, or explain the usage of the material. If they did not reply or attempt to contact the complainant, we would suspend their hosting. The only time we would suspend a site immediately would be for malware, phishing or child pornography.