A company that has over 40 million domain names under its management – and is perhaps better known for controversial ads featuring busty women – has effectively followed Google’s lead in China.  GoDaddy will stop registering domain names in the country.

Ellen Nakashima reported this afternoon that GoDaddy’s taken this step "in response to intrusive new government rules that require applicants to provide extensive personal data, including photographs of themselves. . . .  The rules, the company believes, are an effort by China to increase monitoring and surveillance of Web site content."

GoDaddy may, like Google, lose a bit of revenue due to its decision.  And that missed revenue stream will grow quite a bit larger as more and more Chinese citizens access the Web.

Still, GoDaddy’s decision here is liable to result in a big PR win for the company.  Paying a few women to partially strip on camera doesn’t seem like much compared to supporting free speech in defiance of the Chinese government, after all.

Nakashima wrote that Representative Christopher H. Smith has even stated, "Google fired a shot heard ’round the world, and now a second American company has answered the call to defend the rights of the Chinese people."