GoDaddy Reaps What it Sows

[deadly7]

http://www.thedomains.com/2011/12/25/update-godaddy-loses-28000-more-domains-on-saturday/

GoDaddy has lost over 60,000 accounts because of the whole SOPA fiasco.

[nslay]

If the government doesn't destroy the Internet, then broadband corporations surely will. I envision a future with splintered Internets.

[Newby]

However out of the 50 Million domains registered by Godaddy over 32 Million of these have use Godaddy.com default server of Domaincontrol.com so its a pretty good indication of overall movement.

60000/50000000 = 0.0012

That's 0.12% of their customers. I doubt they even notice or care. I'm surprised they even tried to do anything about it.

[CrAz3D]

wonder what the daily flux is???

[iago]

There are plenty of reasons to hate godaddy (sorry Myndfyre ;) ).

[deadly7]

60000/50000000 = 0.0012

That's 0.12% of their customers. I doubt they even notice or care. I'm surprised they even tried to do anything about it.

I don't mean that this is a huge flux of people (I think from TFA it showed net change was actually 1k out because 22k people signed up or something). Just that it's an interesting change, because losing the favor of nerds online can sometimes be a future problem.

[iago]

My biggest question is - what's the best alternative? I've been wanting to move off GoDaddy ever since they screwed Fyodor (unilaterally deactivated a bunch of his domains after a complaint from a company), but I don't know a good alternative.

Other things I hate, in roughly the order of importance:
- To do anything on the site, I have to go through like 50 pages of ads/special deals/bonus extras/other bullshit
- Finding the domain manager is stab-myself-in-the-face difficult
- Editing multiple domains at the same time is similarly difficult
- They prey on human weakness/hormones in their advertising (I hate companies that use hot women, babies, cute animals, etc in their ads - appealing to the reptile brain to sell you shit is wrong)
- The Fyodor thing
- They probably support SOPA
- The CEO is proud of going elephant hunting

[Sidoh]

My biggest question is - what's the best alternative? I've been wanting to move off GoDaddy ever since they screwed Fyodor (unilaterally deactivated a bunch of his domains after a complaint from a company), but I don't know a good alternative.

Other things I hate, in roughly the order of importance:
- To do anything on the site, I have to go through like 50 pages of ads/special deals/bonus extras/other bullshit
- Finding the domain manager is stab-myself-in-the-face difficult
- Editing multiple domains at the same time is similarly difficult
- They prey on human weakness/hormones in their advertising (I hate companies that use hot women, babies, cute animals, etc in their ads - appealing to the reptile brain to sell you shit is wrong)
- The Fyodor thing
- They probably support SOPA
- The CEO is proud of going elephant hunting

They definitely supported SOPA, but I think this shit has caused them to back down a little.

I think that if you're using the same registrar that sites like TPB and demonoid use, you'd be pretty safe. As it turns out, they both use Key-Systems (a German registrar) or some subsidiary.

My website was shut down a few years ago due to a DMCA complaint. GoDaddy didn't even bother to contact me. They just shut the website down and said "fix it". The complaint was totally bogus and was clearly a sabotage attempt, but they didn't care. I lost a lot of visitors and ad revenue as a result of their assholery. I understand why they do what they do... from a business standpoint, it's probably quite a bit cheaper to err on the side of the fancy lawyers, but it sure does make for a pretty shitty experience for their customers. I transfered it to domaindiscount24 and haven't and any problems since. It's a little more expensive, but knowing I won't get shut down due to some empty copyright claims is well worth the extra cost.

The ex-CEO Bob Parsons seems pretty douchey to me. I don't know anything about their current one.

I have to agree about their interface choices... it's the hugest clusterfuck ever. It's an enormous pain in the ass to use.

[iago]

My website was shut down a few years ago due to a DMCA complaint. GoDaddy didn't even bother to contact me. They just shut the website down and said "fix it". The complaint was totally bogus and was clearly a sabotage attempt, but they didn't care. I lost a lot of visitors and ad revenue as a result of their assholery. I understand why they do what they do... from a business standpoint, it's probably quite a bit cheaper to err on the side of the fancy lawyers, but it sure does make for a pretty shitty experience for their customers. I transfered it to domaindiscount24 and haven't and any problems since. It's a little more expensive, but knowing I won't get shut down due to some empty copyright claims is well worth the extra cost.

That's similar to what happened to fyodor. He had hundreds of domains registered through them, and was a big customer, but when they did that he took his business elsewhere. He used to host http://www.nodaddy.com, but it seems to be dead.

[MyndFyre]

There are plenty of reasons to hate godaddy (sorry Myndfyre ;) ).

LoL; np.  I bash them all the time at the office.

They put out a big email about withdrawing our support of SOPA on Friday.  I wondered what that was about, but I was too uninterested to pay much attention.

[iago]

There are plenty of reasons to hate godaddy (sorry Myndfyre ;) ).

LoL; np.  I bash them all the time at the office.

They put out a big email about withdrawing our support of SOPA on Friday.  I wondered what that was about, but I was too uninterested to pay much attention.

Haha, that's awesome. "As employees, you will no longer support SOPA".

If the people in charge legitimately realized the problems with changed how they feel about SOPA, I have to give them props for that. It's hard for a person/company to admit that they're wrong on an issue. On the other hand, if they changed their views because of the bad publicity they were getting and for no other reason, then I have no respect.

Btw, I'm kinda surprised at your "whatever" attitude towards them.. is it just a job to you? Do you legitimately not really care about the company?

I know when I was at Symantec, I kinda felt that way. I enjoyed what I was doing, and my little niche in the company, but in general I hated the company and what they stand for.

[MyndFyre]

Regarding my 'blah blah' attitude, yes, it's just a job.  I'm working on a few side projects, and building up a consulting business in my off hours.  Go Daddy is a great career place to work, but frankly it's the wal-mart of the internet... things are relatively inexpensive, but still more expensive in general, and a lot of the things that we sell are completely worthless.  My product, for example - Search Engine Visibility - is a waste of $3/month.  The 'premium' version might be worthwhile - it's managed PPC advertising, I think - but the cheap version is stupid (we'll see if it stays like that; I'm supposed to work on an R&D component over the next six months or so).  Also, when I tried to transfer to a very cool position inside the company, my boss's boss blocked my transfer (apparently).

Either way, I'm glad they changed their position on SOPA - I was very much against it in the first place.  Mostly my attitude on Friday was a result of the fact that we were coming up on Christmas weekend.

They didn't say "as employees, you will no longer support SOPA" - it was this press release.  It may have had something to do with the publicity, or it may have had something to do with the company's leadership and ownership changes that occurred just a week prior.  IDK.