I guess GoDaddy had one of their awful commercials air during the show. It showed an attractive woman model next to a funny-looking male nerd, and then lingered over a long sloppy kiss, with a message:
The voice says something along the lines of you should use GoDaddy because it does this brilliant thing of combining SEXY and SMART.
After the average American Super Bowl viewer managed to hold down their Doritos and Bud Light through the endless kissing scene, they were treated to this moral at the end of the commercial:
Sexy women aren’t smart.
Smart men aren’t sexy.
But I learned something useful! I actually have one or two domain names registered with GoDaddy (they were cheap, I got them before I knew their owner was a world-class asshole), and now I know that I have to figure out how to transfer those domains to another registrar this week.
A superbowl commercial was actually good for something!
It seems like every 6 months I heard a story about Godaddy pissing away their business. What with that mass exodus of people with the SOPA thing and their terrible commercials every year. The tech industry hates them, and the average viewer of their commercials has no idea what they even do.
The CEO of GoDaddy also does this brilliant thing of massacring big game animals.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/31/bob-parsons-godaddy-ceo-elephant-hunt_n_843121.html
Good you are ditching them PZ – though I warn you they will make it as hard as possible for you to keep your domain name. Our EC group ditched them years ago, and they sold the domain name right under us to someone who had no connection with our group. Because we were so small, and didn’t have the funds to fight it, we ended up having to change the domain name we had for years.
You should just be able to request a transfer code from GoDaddy. If they don’t provide one, they would be in breach of ICAAN rules. Once you have the code, you can pass it on to the new domain registration company and they will do the rest.
Right. You ought to be able to. My experience with some of these shady domain registrars is that they make it as difficult as possible.
It’s no big deal though. I think the names I registered with godaddy were just quickie casuals, nothing associated with important stuff, so if I lose them it’s not a big worry.
Any recommendations for a GoDaddy alternative? I have a couple dozen domains that I’d like to transfer.
Be forewarned, GoDaddy will do everything they can to screw you once they realize you’re trying to jump ship. They tied up my transfer so long, that my .com expired, and they took ownership rather than putting it to auction, like normal so now I’ve got to wait on it to drop again. I went and got a .net and a .org with another registrar and I have their “nabber” service set up to go after my .com as soon as GoDaddy lets it the eff go.
Jerks.
And here I thought you were going to rip Dodge a new one for their “And God Created A Farmer” ad.
What a bunch of smarmy claptrap. Recycling an old Paul Harvey speech and overlaying it with idealized photos of family farmers. Which is about akin to overlaying it with photos of living Woolly Mammoths.
I just happen to be in the market for a new vehicle. Not buying a Dodge, that’s for sure.
I’m enjoying name.com. They treat me a lot better than GoDaddy. (I jumped ship for an earlier GoDaddy is a jerk episode.)
Oooh… I figured out the user things here… oh this is nice. I have my nickname!!!
8^)
I’ve had great luck with namecheap.com after GoDaddy’s SOPA fiasco.
I signed in to recommend namecheap.com but donsmith beat me to it. I also jumped ship from GoDaddy (and they do make it difficult) and really like namecheap’s service.
I jumped ship from GoDaddy to Hover, which has a nice service that gets you out of the “figure out how in the hell to transfer my domains from this labyrinthian horror” game. I think they call it name valet or something, but it feels like a guide helping you through the underworld.
namecheap and gandi.net are usually the good alternatives I hear about from other hackers whenever GoDaddy’s in the news for some stupid thing or another.
..until the CEO of that other company does something you don’t like or they put out a stupid commercial, then you have to jump ship again (and say that you bought the product before you knew about it).
For those looking to jump ship from GoDaddy, I recommend https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/
I’m a big fan of hover.com, the Tucows registrar. That’s where I moved mine after one of GoDaddy’s many, many embarrassing moves. Honestly, any of the above would be a better choice (and easier to use) than GoDaddy.
The obverse of this is that all sexy men were just called dumb. Way to go, GoDaddy.
I dunno, transferring away from GoDaddy was easy for me. I use 1&1, which is really good, easy to manage, reliable, and cheap.
@Roland: What’s the alternative? Just stay with a company whose CEO does shit you don’t agree with, because you might be (gasp) forced to make another move again, on the odd chance that the next company’s CEO is a similar douchebag? And what’s with “say that you bought the product before you knew about it”?
You know who was a farmer? Cain was a farmer. The one who killed his brother Abel, the shepherd.
I kind of liked the RAV4 Make a Wish commercial:
“I want to be a princess”
{cut to girl in armor in from of a horde}
“WHO WILL AVENGE THE DEATH OF MY FATHER, THE KING?”
I’ve just checked and yes, GoDaddy is still supporting the murder of gay Kenyans.
TRiG.
What’s all this about “smart men aren’t sexy”?
I find intelligence quite attractive!
I’m surprised I don’t see more people complaining about the Audi commercial. The one with the boy who doesn’t have a date to the prom, but after driving his parents’ Audi he walks in, grabs the prom queen and kisses her. If I was just minding my own business and some random guy came and kissed me full-on on the lips without my permission I would be totally pissed and revolted, but since she is just the object of desire I guess she has no say in the matter. arghhh
Hover.com was recently endorsed by the Idle Thumbs podcast crew after backing their Kickstarter – they went above and beyond other sponsors’ messages in their praise, talking about their surprise at how convenient its administration tools were and how, unlike apparently the majority of registrars, it didn’t constatnly give the feeling that it was opening a camwhore ad popunder while you used it.
You need to be very careful. GoDaddy also presents itself as about 80 or 90 smaller registrars all with different names. If you go to the official ICANN list of registrars, about 1/3 of them are GoDaddy shell companies. The only way I could figure out to tell which registrars are GoDaddy, and which aren’t was to check the domain registration of the registrar’s address. An extraordinary number of them share the same address as GoDaddy.
Hard to believe that a company that still sells itself with pictures of under-dressed women can actually succeed in a modern day world.
I made the decisions to use anyone but GoDaddy because I really didn’t want to trust anyone that looked that sleazy with my credit card. The stories being told here make me very glad that I took the time to make sure.
Dreamhost, http://www.dreamhost.com , works well as a registrar and domain host.
I have begun transferring my domains to Hover. Thanks for the suggestions.
I find ICDSoft to be an excellent provider and their SureSupport ticket system is the best I have ever encountered. They respond to a ticket in less than a minute and usually have it resolved in just several minutes. I have not done any comparison shopping lately so don’t know where they are on the price/quality spectrum, but the excellent support keeps me coming back.