Friday, December 23, 2011

Dumped Godaddy Today. Moved 75 domains

Today I finished doing something that I've wanted to do for several years. I dumped Godaddy as my registrar, and hopefully struck a blow against this stupid SOPA bill that would threaten the social internet.

I have used Godaddy for about 6 years and have accumulated 75 domain names.  When Godaddy announced their support of SOPA, that was the final straw. I learned of a boycott that is encouraging people to move their domains from Godaddy on December 29, 2011.  I decided, what the hell... I'll move mine today.

Thanks, Godaddy, for giving me a reason to do something that I've wanted to do for a long time, but have been too lazy to take on.  For years I've been too uninterested in my 3 Godaddy accounts to even look through and prune the list. But the timing was perfect... I'm home for Christmas break, giving me some spare time to sit down and toss out all the domains that I no longer needed, remnants from projects long abandoned or discarded. 

Moving my domains was not a painless process. First I had to unlock 75 domains. Next I had to figure out how to request an authorization code to move the domains.  Then, I had to manually parse 75 emails and create a list that I could upload somewhere else. It took me a couple of hours.

I know that Godaddy won't miss my $850 per year that much, but it felt good to move my business. Hopefully it will register as a small protest against their increasingly offensive and degrading advertising, their show-off CEO, their creeping fees, their increasingly difficult to use website, their incessant up-selling, and (the final straw) their support of SOPA.

I just learned that GoDaddy dropped their support of SOPA, but who cares. I think I know where they really stand. It's too little, too late as far as I'm concerned.

Good bye, Godaddy!