Web domain registrar Go Daddy came under fire last week when it was discovered that the company backed SOPA – the anti-piracy act that threatens to shut down half of the Internet if passed. After some initial fumbling, the CEO backed up a bit and said the company wasn’t supporting SOPA at that time in order to read through the details better. To many, the move seemed half-hearted, and Reddit-backed GoDaddyBoycott.org remained online, while Reddit user selfprodigy declared December 29th as a day to move all of your domains to another registrar.
Go Daddy is no stranger to controversy, with founder Bob Parsons earlier this year posting a video showing him killing an African elephant. This move not only caused the likes of PETA to sever business ties with Go Daddy, but caused many regular consumers to do the same. Sometimes, any publicity is good publicity, but in that case, and with this most recent one, that’s not likely to be the case. Real money is at stake here.
Further trying to mend the issue, Go Daddy has had itself removed from the House’s official list of SOPA supporters – but is this move just a bit too late? Go Daddy didn’t help itself much by dragging this issue on. With the original outcry, the company could have backed out immediately and saved face by claiming it didn’t fully understand what SOPA was all about, but instead, it stuck to its guns – only to finally back down a full week later.
Whenever companies apologize for something, I do wonder just how seriously consumers take it. If Go Daddy was once pro-SOPA, why would anything change if it suddenly backed down and apologized? There is such thing as saying something because it has to be said, either for business reasons or personal reasons. If you were the head of a company that stood to lose tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars because of something you said or did, wouldn’t you backtrack?
I’ve always found Go Daddy to be a bit of an oddball company, so I never used them for anything (though I have ending up using worse alternatives as a result – I’m looking at you, 1&1). I am curious to see if this proposed “move your domain” day on the 29th will in fact go through, or prove a “success” on behalf of the people. If anything good comes out of this, hopefully it’s that the heads of companies like Go Daddy think before they speak.