by Anura Guruge
on November 23, 2021
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‘GoDaddy’ & I, as I talked about in this September 2021 post, go back 22-years.
I was a huge fan & promoter of GoDaddy. At one stage, c. 2010, I probably had 35 ‘products’ — viz., registered domain names, hosted sites & e-mail accounts — at GoDaddy. I had ALL of my ‘Web’ stuff with them (without exception) & tried to get most of my clients to move their stuff over to them too. I swore by GoDaddy — but the swearing had to do with how great they were. My yearly invoices from GoDaddy, as I would be reminded each year as I filed my taxes, ran into the thousands.
GoDaddy, under the legendary founder ‘Bob Parsons’ was good to I & I was grateful. It was not always smooth sailing, but boy, ‘oh, boy!’, did they try. Their support used to be so responsive. They had a highly technical group called the ‘Tiger Team‘. If you were a ‘preferential customer‘, either because you had highly technical needs or you bought a lot of products, your technical issues would be escalated to the ‘Tiger Team’. They were good. They would get on the phone with you.
Well, this is BUT nostalgia.
GoDaddy is a shadow of what it used to be in its heyday. ‘Blake Irving‘, who became their CEO, in 2013, in my opinion, changed the company forever — &, alas, not for the better. I was never a fan of his. I guess this 2017 post was not that subtle as to how I felt. SMILE.
Well, alas, this is not the first unfortunate data breach that GoDaddy has endured. They had another one just 2-years ago! Yes, just two years ago — October 19, 2019.
I started this, my latest (& hopefully ‘greatest’) website/blog in June of this year. I spent weeks looking for the right hosting company for I — & I had decided I was going to use WordPress. I had had 20 (or more) managed WordPress sites at GoDaddy. But, this time around I barely spent 5 minutes thinking about them as an option. I went, in the end, with ‘HostGator‘. So far, they have been immaculate.
I am, of course, delighted that I am NOT a GoDaddy WordPress customer. This data breach will be such a pain for MILLIONS as they scramble trying to change passwords etc. This was NOT acceptable on the part of GoDaddy.
Bob Parsons, you are missed, sorely.
