4 ms·

Actually the piece wasn't so much a warning to others (I was actually referring to another piece that did that, maybe you just skimmed my post and missed that)

Actually the piece wasn't so much a warning to others (I was actually referring to another piece that did that, maybe you just skimmed my post and missed that) as it was to say that backing off SOPA support wasn't enough. That it was time for GoDaddy to change, the way other companies had changed, from crisis. I cited the example of how Johnson & Johnson reacted to the hacking of Tylenol in the 80s. It's often cited as a textbook example of how to do it. They instituted reforms, visible ones, that made it virtually impossible for their product to be tampered with. No one demanded it of them, but they saw it as the only way out of the mess. They had lost huge market share due to the scare. But a year later they were right back on top, because they had re-invested in their brand. GoDaddy, like it or not, is the biggest registrar. And if they can reform their service to get rid of the fraud (again, read the piece, I don't want to rewrite it here) they can lead the rest of the registrar industry. Which is a very important part of the open web. Which is part of a larger context wehere more and more of the activity on the net is going into corporate-owned silos. I think if you read the piece carefully and didn't shoot from the hip so much, you'd see that you had mis-read. Probably due to skimming more than anything, imho. Also, to answer your implicit question -- I went with GoDaddy originally because a lot of people I respected were using it, and I was paying $35 per year at the registrar I was using, and could save a significant amount of money using them. And further, at the time, there really wasn't much of an alternative. Only now are "no nonsense" registrars coming on-line. The best of which is hover.com, though I've used gandi.net and like them, also namecheap, but I don't like how they're "marketing" using SOPA as a selling point. I like that almost as little as GoDaddy thinking they can support SOPA without pissing off their customers.

thaumaturgy 15y ago
I did skim your article previously, so I just sat down with a big cup of tea and re-read it more carefully, and as freshly as I could. And I still stand by my earlier statements. As you say, GoDaddy is the biggest registrar. They are already leading the registrar industry; they just aren't leading it in the ways that we'd like them to. They are wildly successful, by nearly every practical measure of a business. They have absolutely no incentive to change. This current PR flap isn't going to make them change, either. In 18 months, nobody will even remember that this happened. I can feel pretty confident about statements like that because GoDaddy has had really ugly PR issues in the past -- though, admittedly, none of them as large as this one -- and most of those aren't even included in the wikipedia page on GoDaddy, let alone the hilariously short-term memories of people in the technology sector. GoDaddy has been making transfers difficult ever since they opened their doors; they were part of the whole domain tasting / frontrunning issue years ago when there were multiple accusations that GoDaddy was leaking their domain search information even as they were getting in a public fight with Network Solutions over the practice; they've been up-selling customers as a business strategy forever; they've been judge, jury, and executioner in domain censorship since the very beginning; they have had a terrible track record in the security of the servers and of their control panel system since the beginning, a record that still continues even now; their website interface has never ever looked decent; and Bob Parsons has been outspoken in his political and moral repugnance for years. Yet, you still did business with them. I instead did business with Register4Less shortly after Network Solutions lost exclusivity specifically because they promised not to do things that way, and they've kept their promise. (It also helped that they supported Illiad back when UserFriendly was a daily read.) You complain about the amount you were paying to another registrar, but R4L has been about $14/year since shortly after they opened. I can no longer recommend them because they've made some serious technical errors recently and haven't updated their software or their business in a long time. But, it is really really wrong to say that "no nonsense" registrars are "only now" coming on-line. You just didn't know about them. So, that's why I'm really skeptical that your blog post is going to have any impact whatsoever on GoDaddy's business. I think that the current PR mess for GoDaddy speaks more to Reddit's considerable influence than anything else. While I hope that this ends up being the papercut that kills GoDaddy -- and I'll celebrate with a steak dinner the day that they die -- I just don't think they're going to change, because they don't have to, because people don't bother to look closely enough at the history of companies that they choose to do business with. Tylenol in the 80's is a poor example to bring to your position. That (overblown) problem involved child safety at a time when "think of the children" was just becoming a cultural disease in the U.S., and the FDA or other regulatory bodies might have become involved. I wonder if Fyodor now regrets selling NoDaddy to GoDaddy...
- davewiner 15y ago
  Well, I can't respond to all this, but I did think you should read about the seven people who were killed by Tylenol. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tylenol_murders http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tylenol_murders So far I don't think anyone has been killed by SOPA. Something to think about.
  - thaumaturgy 15y ago
    Absolutely no disrespect intended, but Tylenol is still a non-sequitur. Would you rather discuss them or GoDaddy?

thaumaturgy 15y ago

I did skim your article previously, so I just sat down with a big cup of tea and re-read it more carefully, and as freshly as I could. And I still stand by my earlier statements. As you say, GoDaddy is the biggest registrar. They are already leading the registrar industry; they just aren't leading it in the ways that we'd like them to. They are wildly successful, by nearly every practical measure of a business. They have absolutely no incentive to change. This current PR flap isn't going to make them change, either. In 18 months, nobody will even remember that this happened. I can feel pretty confident about statements like that because GoDaddy has had really ugly PR issues in the past -- though, admittedly, none of them as large as this one -- and most of those aren't even included in the wikipedia page on GoDaddy, let alone the hilariously short-term memories of people in the technology sector. GoDaddy has been making transfers difficult ever since they opened their doors; they were part of the whole domain tasting / frontrunning issue years ago when there were multiple accusations that GoDaddy was leaking their domain search information even as they were getting in a public fight with Network Solutions over the practice; they've been up-selling customers as a business strategy forever; they've been judge, jury, and executioner in domain censorship since the very beginning; they have had a terrible track record in the security of the servers and of their control panel system since the beginning, a record that still continues even now; their website interface has never ever looked decent; and Bob Parsons has been outspoken in his political and moral repugnance for years. Yet, you still did business with them. I instead did business with Register4Less shortly after Network Solutions lost exclusivity specifically because they promised not to do things that way, and they've kept their promise. (It also helped that they supported Illiad back when UserFriendly was a daily read.) You complain about the amount you were paying to another registrar, but R4L has been about $14/year since shortly after they opened. I can no longer recommend them because they've made some serious technical errors recently and haven't updated their software or their business in a long time. But, it is really really wrong to say that "no nonsense" registrars are "only now" coming on-line. You just didn't know about them. So, that's why I'm really skeptical that your blog post is going to have any impact whatsoever on GoDaddy's business. I think that the current PR mess for GoDaddy speaks more to Reddit's considerable influence than anything else. While I hope that this ends up being the papercut that kills GoDaddy -- and I'll celebrate with a steak dinner the day that they die -- I just don't think they're going to change, because they don't have to, because people don't bother to look closely enough at the history of companies that they choose to do business with. Tylenol in the 80's is a poor example to bring to your position. That (overblown) problem involved child safety at a time when "think of the children" was just becoming a cultural disease in the U.S., and the FDA or other regulatory bodies might have become involved. I wonder if Fyodor now regrets selling NoDaddy to GoDaddy...

davewiner 15y ago
Well, I can't respond to all this, but I did think you should read about the seven people who were killed by Tylenol. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tylenol_murders http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tylenol_murders So far I don't think anyone has been killed by SOPA. Something to think about.
- thaumaturgy 15y ago
  Absolutely no disrespect intended, but Tylenol is still a non-sequitur. Would you rather discuss them or GoDaddy?