GoDaddy
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GoDaddy.com is an internets registrar and well known webhost. They are well known for making proactive television advertisements, stealing prolific domains for personal gain, and wiping out paid hosting spaces for no reason. They are also known to have their team of lawyers issue Cease and Desist orders when their previous customers attempt to bring their actions to light. They are also known to acknowledge the 1st Amendment.
History of GoDaddy
Although nobody cares, GoDaddy came to life in Web 1.0 as "THE" hosting company. If you weren't hosted on GoDaddy, your site wasn't worth viewing. This was doubly true if your site was hosted there. But almost all of GoDaddy's sites were much less interesting than that - obtained by something known as domain name squatting, which is what happens when a bunch of nerd morons believe it when they're told the rules for company domain sites say you have to actually have a company and a business plan, while one smart suit registers everything in site and says "sue us". The nerds never imagined that nobody else would ever be able to write up an app to provide their own list of sites.
GoDaddy was founded in 1997 by Bob Parsons, and is now three times bigger than its closest competitor. In early 2009, it had reached nearly thirty million domain names under its management, per Wikipedia, because people were too stupid to actually do a SEARCH and see the competition, who offered the same services for cheaper rates.
GoDaddy as a company says it supports many charity organizations, including Perverted-Justice, an organization that attempts to catch and prosecute sexual predators who contact loli online althought GoDaddy also host unorthodox sites. D:
Backing of SOPA, and resultant Boycott
On December 22, 2011, a thread was started on reddit discussing the release of SOPA supporters, which included GoDaddy. Go Daddy subsequently released additional statements supporting the Stop Online Piracy Act, causing many companies to close their Go Daddy accounts. A boycott and transfer of domains was proposed. This quickly spread across the Internet, gained support, and was followed by a proposed Boycott Godaddy day on December 29, 2011. One strong supporter of this action was The Cheezburger CEO Ben Huh, who threatened that the organisation will remove over 1,000 domains from Go Daddy if they keep supporting SOPA
Ad Campaigns
CEO Bob Parsons has called Godaddy's advertising "GoDaddy-esque" which he describes as "fun, edgy and a bit inappropriate." GoDaddy also uses attractive women to promote their webshite, and their spokes models are referred to as “GoDaddy girls.”
GoDaddy spends literally, hundreds of millions of dollars on Superbowl advertising, as demonstrated below. Most, if not all of their advertisements revolve around risque one-liners, however they are at least amusing. They had not advertised in the Superbowl for several years because their ads were deemed too edgy, and they likely will not advertise for many years because of the inability to air ads that complement their "edgy" advertising image, aaaannnndddd also the fact that not even the Superbowl wants their sponsorship any more. They don't even get free domain registration with them. The only time GoDaddy can keep their hands out of their pants is when they advertise during NASCAR functions, because NASCAR are fucking squares and have strict rules about not allowing "sexually suggestive" material in their commercials or on their race cars.
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Domain Theft
Should the prospective owner of a new domain decide that financial situation isn't able to take $1.99, they aren't ready to create such a site, etc. and cancel their shopping cart, GoDaddy has been known to register the domain the next day, park it and charge outlandish fees to purchase it, causing butthurt. They have also been known to "pre-register" expiring domains and park then once in their possession, holding them in ransom; forcing the rightful owner to pay out the nose. In extreme cases, GoDaddy will flat-out simply steal the domain, citing a number of things; including:
- Terms of Service Violations
- Inactive email address listed
- Invalid/Illegal domain name
- AIDS
- Al Gore
- Your Mom
- Spam
They will then flat-out refuse to accept payment to recover the domain, and may even cite fraud and banish you away from their precious ICANN-Certified title.
Hosting fail
GoDaddy also offers very attractive hosting packages, though once the user buys in there's no getting out. Things on your site that once worked will cease to function, required features on certain PHP based applications won't load, and of course, the MySQL Database timeouts. GoDaddy's hosting is nowhere near as cheap or as well run as NFS.Net or Dreamhost, yet they are the #1 host on the internet (By volume of customers). Customer support is considered taboo at GoDaddy, and thus not a lot of effort is put into it. Phone reps are American but clueless, email support takes longer than it should (2-3 days on a hard problem), and refunds are non existent. Most customers leave unsatisfied, and end up filing disputes due to faulty refunds. GoDaddy may even be worse than HostGator.
Customer Reviews
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Gallery
External Links
- GoDaddy deletes hosting and CHMODS files arbitrarily
- A thread demonstrating how GoDaddy "comes up with" domains
- Supply an incorrect email on your domain? It's GoDaddy's now!
- More GoDaddy drama
- GoDaddy - Home of Intellectual Property theft
- 1st Amendment? What's that?
- GoDaddy claims advertising is against the bawwww, er, law
- Some blog about the hassle of using GoDaddy and then like 140+ comments agreeing on how shit it is
- GoDaddy Fan Site
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