I cannot think of a better example of my RECLAIM YOUR DOMAIN work, than migrating the last domains from my GoDaddy account. I’ll try to not bore you to death with the GoDaddy story, but it is the single largest point of joy, and suffering, in the development of my digital self, I can think of.
I have been a GoDaddy customer for over ten years. Around 2000 I discovered the registrar, who offered a significant cheaper domain registrar, giving me a domain for a year at about $10, where previously I was paying $35 a year, per domain. At one point, I had over 100 domains registered for my own projects, and my business at the registrar.
Over the last 10 years, GoDaddy managed to get "spammier" in their approach to doing business, constantly changing their interface around the single feature I was using the platform for—domain registration. I didn’t need your other shit, I was only there for your cheap domain registration, and DNS services--I could do the rest myself.
Along the way, it was clear GoDaddy was more than just spammy, their were also pretty sexist and racist. GoDaddy represents what is wrong with the World Wide Web, demonstrating that the dominate vision of WWW is an equivalent of Times Square Advertising in New York. Nobody should have to endure GoDaddy just to be able to own a website.
I moved most of my domains off of GoDaddy a couple years ago, but I’ve hesitated the complex migration of kinlane.com, and apievangelist.com. This holiday season I’m thankful for the ability to reclaim my domain(s) from GoDaddy, migrating them to Hover.com, and being able to setup CloudFare to help me manage, and defend my domain.
I’m not against making money on the Internet, but please if you do business on the web, offer more value than GoDaddy does, and please show some class when it comes to selling your products, and don’t just vomit in face with your website, and your services. I’m a big supporter of the Internet, and World Wide Web, but I also we can do better, which is why I finished reclaiming my domains(s) from GoDaddy today. #GoodBye
