How GoDaddy's Quest For Respect Led To an Improbable Partnership With MIT (fastcompany.com) 38
harrymcc writes: GoDaddy, the world's biggest domain registrar, remains most famous for its tacky Super Bowl ads and controversial founder, Bob Parsons. But in recent years, the company was sold, hired a CEO from Microsoft and Yahoo, and has made a major effort to reinvent itself as a serious, uncontroversial, technologically-savvy outfit. And now it's partnered with MIT's Media Lab in an ambitious experiment--which I wrote about over at Fast Company--involving placing sensors around downtown Boston to collect big data that could help the small businesses which line the city's streets.
Sensors... (Score:3)
Re:Sensors... (Score:5, Informative)
Trying to count how many people pass a point is hardly tracking, you moron.
If you even bothered to read the article half a page down, you'd see there's a timelapse photography of visiting customers. This video is stored on a website we download. Ergo, they're storing videos of people walking by and saving them. And so, there's a permanent record of where these customers were at the time - and let's be honest, when are they ever going to delete this? So yes, you could track someone by seeing these videos, easily.
Secondly, I did not say anything about whether I agree or not with these measures, I merely expressed surprise that in saying they want to be non-controversial, they immediately jump right into one of the most hot button topics in society today - privacy. I do disagree with it, yes, but that's not the point I made. Next time, maybe not whine on your gut instinct, Anonymous Coward...
Re: (Score:2)
This is how Disney makes R movies with nudity and violence.
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Assuming the service is good, there should be brand recognition among current customers.
Yeah, BAD brand recognition. When GoDaddy first came along, I used to recommend it to clients as a good cheap web host. But then they started running ads that made the company look more like some sleazy Hooters knockoff than an ISP, and I immediately stopped recommending them or even mentioning them to clients. I'm not sure the audience they were going for (maybe they wanted to be the ISP of choice for frat houses?), but I can tell you that they built a very sleazy reputation over many years that will be ha
SOPA (Score:5, Informative)
Don't forget they supported SOPA.
Fascist Company (Score:4, Informative)
From a company/CEO that endorses SOPA (despite its retraction after the boycott), Gitmo/water boarding (despite the later change after the public outcry), and goes out of its way to help law enforcement cease assets against its own customers without even a court order.
Putting sensors everywhere in the street to surveil passers-by seems like a perfect continuation of the same fascist big brother government-knows-better mindset. I'm not sure changing the CEO is going to change anything about the company itself, except may be get a CEO that is better at keeping his mouth shut (than the last one).
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BUT .. it is big-data in the clouds, so everything is forgiven.
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Sorry. My bad.
"help law enforcement seize assets against its own customers"
Advertisment much (Score:1)
By all means write the story but to me this comes across as bartely concealed advertising. I was also under the impression that it is bad form to submit ones own work to Slashdot. Godaddy are also (and always will be) a scummy company. Im suprised Dice are not charging them advertising rates. Tell me.. do Fastcompany have a minimum number of clicks required in order to be paid for the article/advert ?
lost my respect when they started hosting spammers (Score:4, Informative)
and ignoring complaints about it.
http://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/li... [spamhaus.org]
Thats ok though, IPTABLES fixed that problem.
Re: lost my respect when they started hosting spam (Score:2)
My favorite was when I sent their support a pcap showing which one of their servers was sending RST instead of serving my client's website (their choice...) and they dismissed it because 'there's nothing wrong with our servers'.
It's not like there's nobody cheaper or better - such an amazing testament to the power of advertising.
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I'll be honest: They lost my respect the first time I heard of them. The name "Go Daddy" is super creepy. I find it hard to take a company seriously when it chooses a name like that. And then I logged into the site at one point when I was helping someone, and the negative associations were reinforced. The whole thing always felt like a spam/scam site. I think I saw one of the commercials once, and I wasn't particularly offended or anything, but again, it reinforced the sense that the company seemed tra
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I really can't imagine who thought this was a good idea, but it doesn't seem to have done their sales any harm.
It''s obviously true that any advertising or marketing is ok as long as it creates some impression, whether good or bad. In the UK, the "go compare" insurance ads are simultaneously the most hated and most recognisable ones on TV.
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On a slow news day, it is free.
What? (Score:1)
Godaddy weaseling a partnership with MIT is sad enough. Considering what is known about godaddy and it's principles and methods, the fact that the project is to be big-brother (uhh, i mean data) information collection is pretty disturbing.
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Partnering "with MIT" is very different from partnering with "anything from the top three floors of the MIT Media Lab". Instead of doing serious R&D, they try to recreate for investors what you see in 10 seconds of a James Bond film when he walks through Q's lab.
Started at a disadvantage (Score:2)
What? Wait. Is it just me? It's just me, isn't it?
Not enough.... (Score:2)
How about their servers still being horribly under powered? I have migrated many clients off of godaddy to another service using the same "base level" accounts and have a 400% speed increase in their wordpress,joomla, etc than on godaddy.
Godaddy feels like most of the time their hosting is on servers from 1998 and overloaded with 10,000 sites per 4 processor Pentium III server.
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My biggest problem with GoDaddy is that they made my transfer take so long that my domain expired, and then made me pay the renewal before they would finish the transfer. They are actual outright thieves, and they can't die in a fire soon enough.
The new head of marketing meets the CEO (Score:2)
~ Excellent! What would you suggest we change?
~ The name?
.
Known Best for... (Score:2)
"GoDaddy, the world's biggest domain registrar, remains most famous for its tacky Super Bowl ads and controversial founder, Bob Parsons."
Who the fuck is Bob Parsons? The only reason most people know of them is for Danica Patrick.
That doesn't make them less greedy and evil (Score:2)
How many times has GoDaddy been in the news for supporting anti-freedom or anti-net neutrality legislation?
Can anyone else remember other ways GoDaddy has abused its position as a registrar? I don't remember the specifics.
They are an evil company, and I'll gladly take my business to another registrar, whether it's cheaper or more expensive.