Go Daddy big daddy gone
Adelman legs it, new owners grab the wheel
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Warren Adelman has quit as chief executive of market-leading domain names and hosting company Go Daddy after less than eight months on the job.
He's been replaced on an interim basis by Scott Wagner of KKR, one of the venture capital companies that led a buyout of the company, worth a reported $2.2bn, which closed last December.
“As much as I have enjoyed my roles as CEO and formerly as President and Chief Operating Officer, I have reached a juncture in my life when I would like to spend more time with my family," Adelman, who spent almost a decade with the company, said in a statement.
Adelman took over as CEO at the same time as the KKR-led investment closed. He replaced Bob Parsons, Go Daddy's outspoken and often controversial elephant-hunting founder.
He walked straight into controversy. Go Daddy's vocal support for the hugely unpopular Stop Online Piracy Act in the US caused huge public relations problems for the company during his first weeks in the CEO's office, also leading to a modest departure of customers to competing registrars.
The position was quickly reversed, but not before the brand damage had been done. Go Daddy general counsel Christine Jones, believed to have been a key decision-maker in the SOPA scandal, left the company earlier this year.
Adelman had the mixed blessing of not being Parsons, a controversy-magnet whose occasional PR blunders often nevertheless perversely led to market share gains for the company.
The new boss promised a gentler image for the company, more focused on technology and less on large-chested spokesmodels, which has manifested itself somewhat in its latest batch of US television commercials, which complement the eye candy with deliberately un-sexy data centre archetypes.
Adelman will stick around at Go Daddy as a “special adviser for strategy and global policy”, according to a company statement.
Go Daddy had $1.1bn in sales and broke through the 10 million customer mark in 2011, according to the company. ®
COMMENTS
Hmmm
I got a call from a colleage telling me I should switch from Godaddy. He was calling from his iPhone. Odd, since it turned out as far as I'm aware Apple were supporters of SOPA, they just managed to keep it out of the press better than Godaddy did. I suggested he might want to ditch his iPhone if he was so het up about SOPA, his integrity apparently didn't stretch to ditching his Jesus phone though.
Funny how some companies are easy to bash, others less so. Personally, I don't see how any corporate giant is worthy of unwaiving loyalty.
GoDaddy has no redeeming qualities
I find a bunch of things about them irritating:
- The "control panel" interface is clunky and slow
- My webserver was slow as hell (not a dedicated server, but after switching to a similar plan on HawkHost, it's magnitudes faster)
- Pricey, considering what you (don't) get. Private registration is another upcharge, databases are limited, not much flexibility when it comes to .htaccess control
Scumbags
Not even going into their tastless, sexis, exploitative advertising methods, I think they're scumbags, period.
I did an "is this domain available" search from my own provider one day but didn't order it right then. The next day it wasn't available. When I checked, I found it was "parked" by Go Daddy and I could have it if and only if I used Go Daddy to register it.
I used a ".net" variation instead of ".com"
Registrars "parking" domains is no different than typosquatting in my book.
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