Why I Won’t Use GoDaddy.com
UPDATE, July 2014: GoDaddy's founder, Bob Parsons, has left the company. The new CEO, Blake Irving, has reportedly ended the sexist advertising of the company and is hiring more women in significant positions throughout the company. I have not yet been able to determine whether this company continues to support far-right positions in other issue areas.
UPDATE, August 2017: GoDaddy provided services to a neo-Nazi Web site until August 2017 under the guise of “protecting a free and open Internet,” finally canceling that arrangement after the company started to get heat. GoDaddy’s CEO claimed the site had crossed a line by “inciting violence“ with language attacking Heather Heyer, who had been killed by a neo-Nazi in Charlottesville, VA the previous weekend. (In my opinion, it’s hard to buy the claim of “inciting violence” against a deceased person. It’s easier to understand that public pressure on GoDaddy made the difference.)
UPDATE, July 2014: GoDaddy's founder, Bob Parsons, has left the company. The new CEO, Blake Irving, has reportedly ended the sexist advertising of the company and is hiring more women in significant positions throughout the company. I have not yet been able to determine whether this company continues to support far-right positions in other issue areas.
UPDATE, August 2017: GoDaddy provided services to a neo-Nazi Web site until August 2017 under the guise of “protecting a free and open Internet,” finally canceling that arrangement after the company started to get heat. GoDaddy’s CEO claimed the site had crossed a line by “inciting violence“ with language attacking Heather Heyer, who had been killed by a neo-Nazi in Charlottesville, VA the previous weekend. (In my opinion, it’s hard to buy the claim of “inciting violence” against a deceased person. It’s easier to understand that public pressure on GoDaddy made the difference.)
One of the most widely used online services for registering domain names and hosting Web sites is GoDaddy.com. I won’t use them and I have moved a number of clients away from GoDaddy’s services. Why?
• GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons boasts killing an elephant, leopard on vacation video (Geek.com)
• Stupid GoDaddy Deserves Boycott (Forbes)
• GoDaddy’s Wall-to-Wall Awfulness (San Francisco Weekly)
I will be glad to move your domain registration and other services from GoDaddy to other services, at a reduced hourly rate.
- GoDaddy’s advertising is degrading to women. From its initial SuperBowl ad featuring the first "GoDaddy girl," an actor in foot-fetish films, to today, GoDaddy routinely uses sex to sell its products in a particularly crass and offensive manner.
- GoDaddy’s founder supports torture of prisoners at Guantanamo. In a blog post he eventually recanted, GoDaddy founder Bob Parsons, a billionaire ex-Marine, said of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay (many of whom are now acknowledged by the U.S. to have been nabbed in error, having no criminal or terrorist ties) “still have not talked — because our interrogation methods are so weak.” See:
- GoDaddy funds right-wing and Republican causes. Donations from GoDaddy's political fund directly to Congressional election campaigns have been lopsidedly given to Republicans. In the 2012 election cycle, for example, GoDaddy gave $58,750 to Republicans, nearly three times as much as the $21,000 given to Democrats (see here). Donations to parties and political-action committees totaled $87,000 to Republicans and $42,000 to Democrats in 2012 (see here), while Parsons himself donated $1 million to Mitt Romney's "superPAC" (see here).
- GoDaddy’s founder brags about shooting elephants and leopards. After he tweeted video of himself smiling over the carcass of an elephant he had killed, Parsons was criticized by animal-rights organizations worldwide. See:
• GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons boasts killing an elephant, leopard on vacation video (Geek.com)
- GoDaddy initially supported the regressive, dangerous Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). According to leading online-rights defender Electronic Frontier Foundation (see here; oppose the bill here), SOPA would allow corporations to censor the Internet by enabling them to take down others’ Web sites. GoDaddy initially supported this legislation. As a result, a wide range of Internet sites abandoned GoDaddy, including Wikipedia (reported here) and more than 65,000 other domains (reported here and here). After the mass disaffections, GoDaddy withdrew its support of SOPA. See also:
• Stupid GoDaddy Deserves Boycott (Forbes)
• GoDaddy’s Wall-to-Wall Awfulness (San Francisco Weekly)
- GoDaddy has been known to arbitrarily yank Web sites off of the Internet (see here for example), apparently when company officials don’t like a site’s politics.
I will be glad to move your domain registration and other services from GoDaddy to other services, at a reduced hourly rate.