Daniel Johnson, Jr.

Welcome to Dump Go Daddy Day.

I’ve moved my domain registrations over to Namecheap. Today only, for every domain transfer, they’re donating $1 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and their fight against SOPA.  If you’re interested in becoming one of their customers, I’d love if you’d use the following affiliate link:

Background

I think it was 2006 when a couple of other podcasters contacted me to say they had bought domain names for me. At that time, my blog websites were hosted at Blogger, and this allowed me to be able to give my audience a simpler name. And it’s more professional.

I’d heard of Go Daddy‘s endorsement of podcasting through their various agreements with other networks, as many of the shows I’d listen to became affiliates. I’ve used coupon codes to register and renew domains over the years.

Sleaze Happens

Then they started to get sleazy.  By that I mean that their online and Super Bowl ads told me that they were targeting a market that I really had no interest in being a part of.  What’s ironic is that Bob Parsons, who founded Go Daddy, also had a company called Parsons Technology, which made the QuickVerse Bible software, which we bought with our first home computer 12 years ago.

I began moving my domain registrations elsewhere. I had some domains coming up for renewal next month and had planned to move them when they were closer to expiring.

The SOPA/PIPA Thing

I’m not even going to claim I know enough about it to be an expert (I’ve included links to related stories below, however.). The US Congress has been discussing legislation to further deal with online piracy. I don’t believe that piracy is good, but I think that the way Congress is trying to deal with it through this new legislation is a bad solution.

Among those businesses to have come out in support of SOPA/PIPA, Go Daddy was one of them.  This led to many of its customers deciding to leave them in mass exodus. Today, December 29, 2011, is being known in many circles as “Dump Go Daddy Day”. (Go Daddy has since removed their explicit support in response to all the outcry to try to save some face.)

This was the rest of the motivation I needed to leave them.

So I’ve now moved my domain registrations over to Namecheap and have become an affiliate myself. And, as I said earlier, today only, for every domain transfer, they’re donating $1 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and their fight against SOPA.  So if you’re interested in becoming one of their customers, I’d love if you’d use the following link:

 

Related articles

• GoDaddy boycott over piracy views (bbc.co.uk)
• Stupid GoDaddy Deserves Boycott (forbes.com)
• Namecheap to Donate $1 to EFF for Every Domain Transfer on December 29 (elliotsblog.com)
• December 29 is ‘Dump GoDaddy Day’ (digitaltrends.com)
• Angry geeks fire back at SOPA supporters (rt.com)
• Anti-SOPA activists find ways to keep the Internet free (promoteliberty.wordpress.com)

Tags: Bob Parsons, Domain name, Domain name registrar, Dump GoDaddy Day, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Go Daddy, GoDaddy, MoveYourDomainDay, Namecheap, PIPA, SOPA, United States Congress, US Congress

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 29th, 2011 at 12:14 pm and is filed under blogging, branding, marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.