system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How does GoDaddy own domain names? How do you get a domain?

How does GoDaddy sell domains? Who gives them the right to control addresses (and the internet)? Who did GoDaddy buy their site from? Must you use GoDaddy or a similar company if you wanted to make a website? If not, how do you make a website of your own, without a second party?
gpt
Okay, here we go.

ICANN is the organization that controls domain names worldwide.  Companies get approved as domain registrars.  GoDaddy, NameCheap, and hundreds of other companies can register a domain for you.  They have to make sure it's unique, and they have to point their domain name servers (DNS's) to where you domain is hosted.

Once you own a domain name, you then need to host it somewhere.  That does NOT need to be the same place you registered it.  When you buy domain hosting, the host will tell you what to set your DNS settings to.  You go to your registrar and set them there.

Then, when someone types in your URL, your computer does a couple of things (for this example, let's say you registered domain.com at GoDaddy, you host your site on BlueHost, and you use Comcast):

* You type in domain.com in the URL bar on your browser
* Comcast says "who owns the registration for domain.com?  Oh, GoDaddy?  Ok, let's ping them and find out where it is."
* GoDaddy says "domain.com is hosted by BlueHost, at IP address 1.2.3.127"
* Your browser then requests 1.2.3.127, which is where your site is actually hosted on Bluehost, and displays the home page (index.html or index.php).

DNS servers update across the internet on a time schedule ranging from 5 minutes to 48 hours.  That's why, sometimes when a site is moving to a new host, it takes a while before it becomes available to you again.