Again.. there is lots of things involved for pricing and I don't think you can just point to GoDaddy for this. Each hosting puts their own spin on it.. and have to involve ICANN fees, certain state and government taxes. As for privacy, just as when a business gets licensed, the information is considered public.. The law requires that the personal information you provide with every domain you register be made public in the
"WHOIS" database. .. So other hosting companies are aware of who bought what, if it is to expire, if another party wants to buy... again not just GoDaddy. You can look up information about most domains at http://www.dnsstuff.com/
Yes, you can pay for extra privacy... with or through another dealer. GoDaddy kinda contains their own 'whois' to look up the information but packages the ability to keep your site private through Domains by Proxy http://www.domainsbyproxy.com/ -- this basically just puts their contact information in the place of yours whenever someone uses a WHOIS tool. Again.. many WHOIS tools out there... many less secure then GoDaddy. So again, pick your battles. A non GoDaddy hosting company will still put your domain in the WHOIS, unless you pay for privacy .. or if they include it in your hosting setup.
w i l z d e z i g n ... XHTML, XML, CSS, ColdFusion, PHP, SQL.. hand coder only!