I cited the example of how Johnson & Johnson reacted to the hacking of Tylenol in the 80s. It's often cited as a textbook example of how to do it. They instituted reforms, visible ones, that made it virtually impossible for their product to be tampered with. No one demanded it of them, but they saw it as the only way out of the mess. They had lost huge market share due to the scare. But a year later they were right back on top, because they had re-invested in their brand.
GoDaddy, like it or not, is the biggest registrar. And if they can reform their service to get rid of the fraud (again, read the piece, I don't want to rewrite it here) they can lead the rest of the registrar industry. Which is a very important part of the open web. Which is part of a larger context wehere more and more of the activity on the net is going into corporate-owned silos.
I think if you read the piece carefully and didn't shoot from the hip so much, you'd see that you had mis-read. Probably due to skimming more than anything, imho.
Also, to answer your implicit question -- I went with GoDaddy originally because a lot of people I respected were using it, and I was paying $35 per year at the registrar I was using, and could save a significant amount of money using them. And further, at the time, there really wasn't much of an alternative. Only now are "no nonsense" registrars coming on-line. The best of which is hover.com, though I've used gandi.net and like them, also namecheap, but I don't like how they're "marketing" using SOPA as a selling point. I like that almost as little as GoDaddy thinking they can support SOPA without pissing off their customers.
And I still stand by my earlier statements.
As you say, GoDaddy is the biggest registrar. They are already leading the registrar industry; they just aren't leading it in the ways that we'd like them to. They are wildly successful, by nearly every practical measure of a business. They have absolutely no incentive to change.
This current PR flap isn't going to make them change, either. In 18 months, nobody will even remember that this happened. I can feel pretty confident about statements like that because GoDaddy has had really ugly PR issues in the past -- though, admittedly, none of them as large as this one -- and most of those aren't even included in the wikipedia page on GoDaddy, let alone the hilariously short-term memories of people in the technology sector.
GoDaddy has been making transfers difficult ever since they opened their doors; they were part of the whole domain tasting / frontrunning issue years ago when there were multiple accusations that GoDaddy was leaking their domain search information even as they were getting in a public fight with Network Solutions over the practice; they've been up-selling customers as a business strategy forever; they've been judge, jury, and executioner in domain censorship since the very beginning; they have had a terrible track record in the security of the servers and of their control panel system since the beginning, a record that still continues even now; their website interface has never ever looked decent; and Bob Parsons has been outspoken in his political and moral repugnance for years.
Yet, you still did business with them.
I instead did business with Register4Less shortly after Network Solutions lost exclusivity specifically because they promised not to do things that way, and they've kept their promise. (It also helped that they supported Illiad back when UserFriendly was a daily read.) You complain about the amount you were paying to another registrar, but R4L has been about $14/year since shortly after they opened. I can no longer recommend them because they've made some serious technical errors recently and haven't updated their software or their business in a long time. But, it is really really wrong to say that "no nonsense" registrars are "only now" coming on-line.
You just didn't know about them.
So, that's why I'm really skeptical that your blog post is going to have any impact whatsoever on GoDaddy's business. I think that the current PR mess for GoDaddy speaks more to Reddit's considerable influence than anything else. While I hope that this ends up being the papercut that kills GoDaddy -- and I'll celebrate with a steak dinner the day that they die -- I just don't think they're going to change, because they don't have to, because people don't bother to look closely enough at the history of companies that they choose to do business with.
Tylenol in the 80's is a poor example to bring to your position. That (overblown) problem involved child safety at a time when "think of the children" was just becoming a cultural disease in the U.S., and the FDA or other regulatory bodies might have become involved.
I wonder if Fyodor now regrets selling NoDaddy to GoDaddy...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tylenol_murders
So far I don't think anyone has been killed by SOPA.
Something to think about.
GoDaddy is the largest and best-known registrar. For people who don't know much about something, picking a large and familiar option is a common heuristic. That feels safe.
What will make it feel unsafe is frequently hearing bad things about them. Novice domain purchasers won't often read Hacker News or know who Dave Winer is, but they could well have a friend who does. Articles like this (and repeated Hacker News discussions about GoDaddy sucking) make it more likely that average consumers will hear enough negative buzz that they'll pick somebody else. I'm all for it.
My guess is that all these registrars and discount hosting providers cobble together a variety of third party services, offshore support and end up with a frankenstein customer experience.
OK, I've flagged this. Not only are the GoDaddy articles on the front page here getting out of hand, but this article adds literally nothing to any discussion anywhere. I'm sure the author is a wonderful and intelligent person, but this particular article is completely useless.
In particular, I am completely underwhelmed by anybody that says they're writing a blog post about a company "as a warning to others", or that "there ought to be a consumer reports for ______". Here's the thing: there are already a bajillion boo-hoo stories out there about GoDaddy. They have a terrible track record. (If someone is actively doing any business at all with GoDaddy, I immediately have a clue about how long they've been in the industry, and how deeply, and their level of expertise.)
But nobody bothers to do background research on companies like this! When this guy went and decided to do business with GoDaddy, he obviously didn't bother to read any of the other stuff online about them first. What good would a Consumer Reports have done him? He'd've ignored it too! The people registering 35,000 domains on GoDaddy tomorrow also won't read his post, nor will they likely read any of the other stuff out there about GoDaddy.
Instead, they'll think they've got an idea for something, say to themselves, "I need to register a domain!", wonder how to go about that, Google it, and -- "Oh yeah, GoDaddy! They say they have great support! They say they're cheap! And oh look, boobs! I've heard of them..."
I'm sorry you got ripped off by a company that ripped off thousands of other people before you. Let this be a $5 lesson to do your homework next time. :-)