Godaddy.com promotes their web site services all across the various media outlets. They even spent millions on a Super Bowl campaign in 2007. They claim that anyone can have a professional e-commerce web site for only pennies! Visiting godaddy.com reveals pages of smiling non-technical people, mostly attractive women, with bold face phrases such as “it’s fun for ANYONE to create their own site” and “it’s so easy-to-use.” Ask yourself this, does a hammer make it “so easy” for anyone to become a carpenter? Learn why GoDaddy’s claims are bunk, and you can get more bang for your buck by going with a pro.

It was bad enough when anyone with a copy of Microsoft FrontPage, or Macromedia Dreamweaver, suddenly fancied his or herself as a competent web developer. The misconception begins with the notion that HTML is a programming language, and knowing the language is the entire secret behind creating a successful web site.

Let’s very quickly clear up the basic misconception. HTML is not a programming language. Although many professionals write HTML manually, tag by tag, others use web development tools such as Macromedia Dreamweaver. There’s more to a web site than mere code.

Adobe Photoshop makes it possible to create stunning images for your web site, much the same as a quality Piano makes it possible to create beautiful melodies of blissful harmony. But just like any tool, you have to know how to use it. With the Piano, it’s instantly obvious when someone lacks the skill to play, but to the tone deaf, he or she is none the wiser. Unfortunately, most armature web developers are far worse off than the tone-deaf musician.

It’s important to have a great .com name! This is true. But it isn’t the key to web success. A “registrar” is a company that sells .com names, along with .net, .org, and others. That’s where GoDaddy (godaddy.com) comes in; they are a .com virtual giant that got started by selling domain names. It was created by a clever fella named Gordon Lyon, who realized that selling the domain name was just the hook, and he could make far more money hocking all of the Internet extras, including DIY web design templates, hosting, and e-commerce tools.

What Gordon Lyon wants to do is convince you that you don’t need to hire a professional web developer, and pay a web site hosting company. You are to believe that GoDaddy is so special it can make you a web developing superstar overnight, and host your site for next to nothing.

Unfortunately GoDaddy doesn’t seem to focus much on stability, security, or customer service, and their claims are pie in the sky. They are notorious for internal errors and mishandling customer domain names, resulting in serious outages and money lost. People, credit card in hand, are mislead into believing that GoDaddy will provide the tools and web templates for instant, overnight success of any web endeavor.

Once hooked, the “newbie” customer soon realizes that having a successful web site doesn’t result from GoDaddy site builder tools and corny templates. They end up with an amateur looking site. They often don’t even realize it until those that are not web tone deaf bring it to their attention. So finally, in the face of failure, the disenfranchised GoDaddy customer wishes to transfer his or her Internet name and site elsewhere (hopefully to a professional), and GoDaddy makes it nearly impossible to do so. They put a proverbial lock on the Internet name, making it very painful for you to leave.

There is an International group known as ICANN that is the authority for regulating Internet names on the World Wide Web. They can be thought of as the “cops of the net” in a way. However, they are under funded and understaffed. Because of this, GoDaddy is constantly pushing the limits of what they can get away with. For example, GoDaddy has a system dubbed the “whois change embargo” and it’s clearly a violation of ICANN law. However, they continue this illegal program along with other ICANN rule violations on a daily basis.

GoDaddy has angered some of the wrong people on the Internet. A group of hackers decided to take GoDaddy down and hit them with a massive distributed denial of service attack. The attack took down many GoDaddy customer websites and other services for several hours in 2007. See, when the hackers hit GoDaddy, they are hitting all GoDaddy customers too. GoDaddy Chief Security Officer, Neil Warner, seemed unable to pinpoint the source of the attack while many GoDaddy customers were helpless. He would not comment to the press until well after the incident was over and the mess cleaned up.

Their business ethics have been brought into serious question when GoDaddy VP Adam Dicker was caught bidding against customers in their own domain name auctions. Dicker won some of the domains he bid for, and pushed up the bid price on auctions he didn’t win. An official press statement released by GoDaddy read, “Go Daddy has reviewed the auction and found nothing improper.”

Over the years GoDaddy has grown to become the largest domain name registration service despite their many problems. They have been charged with everything from domain name theft, cyber squatting, fraud, and insider trading in domain names. Yet, due to their mega advertising campaigns, including television, and their unique ability to take advantage to the relative cluelessness of the average person when it comes to the Internet, they continue to thrive.

So, if you want your new Internet domain name and web site controlled by a company with notoriously terrible support, unethical business practices, and the target of hackers looking to get even, maybe GoDaddy is just for you. So what if your site only looks professional to you? I guess your competitor that is picking up all your lost business appreciates the fact that you went with GoDaddy too!

Learn how:

This entry was posted on Monday, July 7th, 2008 at 2:07 pm and is filed under PC/Internet. 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.