Not sure if 3 hours ago counts as breaking or not, but I don't see anything about this in today's SOPA news, so here goes:
Burned By Fleeing Customers, GoDaddy No Longer Just ‘Doesn’t Support’ But Actually “OPPOSES” SOPA
Just in time for the aptly named “Dump GoDaddy” day, our favorite PR piñata GoDaddy just emailed a number of press, with a fresh statement from new CEO Warren Adelman.
From the email …
The statement is from our newly appointed CEO, who makes it clear, we don’t just ‘not support SOPA,’ Go Daddy OPPOSES SOPA.
“We have observed a spike in domain name transfers, which are running above normal rates and which we attribute to GoDaddy’s prior support for SOPA, which was reversed,” said Go Daddy CEO Warren Adelman. “Go Daddy opposes SOPA because the legislation has not fulfilled its basic requirement to build a consensus among stake-holders in the technology and Internet communities. Our company regrets the loss of any of our customers, who remain our highest priority, and we hope to repair those relationships and win back their business over time.”
Now, whether this is a true change in philosophy or just blowing smoke up their customers' asses in order to stem the tide of domain transfers, I have no idea, but it's certainly a sign that some protest movements can have an impact.
Such an impact, that they're now apparently calling up customers, begging them to stay:
I just got a call from #GoDaddy. The rep said he noticed that I’d transferred my 60+ domains away...and wanted to know if I’d tell them why. I got to tell them that it was because of their #SOPA support, and that I couldn’t in good conscience give my money to a tech company that would support legislation like that.
I told him I was aware that they had reversed their position, but that their explicit support of it in the first place had cost them my confidence in them, as it is at the best viciously ignorant, and at worst, malicious.
Of course, as one commenter put it:
If one reads carefully, GoDaddy still DOES support SOPA in full, and without apology. What they actually oppose is that the legislatures "has not fulfilled its basic requirement to build a consensus among stake-holders".
As far as one should read from that statement, they still offer full support for the rules and regulations presented in SOPA, the only thing they oppose is the "lack of consensus" - aka - our customers are leaving en masse, and regardless of what is in SOPA, losing our customers is all we really care about.
There's also the little matter that GoDaddy HELPED WRITE SOPA in the first place, which makes this supposed turnaround hard to swallow.
Even if GoDaddy's supposed change of heart is sincere, there's still plenty of reasons to dislike them...although most of them have to do with their torture-loving, elephant-killing former CEO, Bob Parsons, who has taken a reduced (but still significant) role in the company since July., so I'll leave it to you to decide whether you still want to keep them as your domain registrar/web host or not.
For my part, I'm offering a 20% discount on any domain transferred away from GoDaddy ($12 instead of the normal $15, includes an extra year of registration) as well as 20% off of all hosting accounts for the first year; so far I've picked up 4 domains and 1 hosting account today from people telling GoDaddy to buzz off. If anyone's interested, feel free to contact me.
(And yes, I recognize that this may be considered spamming; if so, feel free to say so, but it seemed appropriate given the topic).
Anyway, just thought the latest GoDaddy news was diary-worthy.