[cheez]

While it is annoying, it is how he got to where he is.

My 10yo daughter knows a godaddy page. Ugly green + chicks. That's branding.

But I always have to explain to her how he is objectifying women and how men who fall for it are stupid.

Then she asks me how I found out about it...

[jonnathanson]

"....men who fall for it are stupid"

In fairness to GoDaddy, I doubt there's a significant portion of its historical customer base that has "fallen for it," i.e., bought products or services from the company solely or primarily because of its scantily clad models.

GoDaddy got to where it is today because it was -- at least for a long period of time -- the cheapest provider of domain registration widely known to the general public. Say what you will about its upsell tactics, or its spotty service level, or its arguably shady subscription terms. But the sticker price of $2.99 per domain was a monumental proposition back when GoDaddy first came onto the scene.

Do its ad campaigns objectify women? Yes. Are they cheesy, sleazy, and in questionable taste? Yes. But their purpose has always been simply to attract attention and traffic to the site. Now, that branding might get folks in the door, but it doesn't actually sell product. To claim that people have purchased GoDaddy registrations because they "fell for" the ad campaign is a bit of a stretch.

[cheez]

Um, getting people to your door is one step. Certainly a good product is next!

If that wasn't clear, yes, the product is good which helps. But there are lots of good products out there.

[dumbphone]

> While it is annoying, it is how he got to where he is.

Not necessarily. For years GoDaddy has had the cheapest non-promotional domain pricing. That's what made a lot of IT-savvy people use GoDaddy despite of its annoying user interface.

[gnosis]

GoDaddy's problems go far beyond an annoying user interface.

In the early days of the internet boom GoDaddy was like AOL. Most people who used either didn't know any better.

Really tech savvy people avoided them like the plague, because they valued not being pestered with garbage, preferred to deal with companies they could respect and on whose service they could depend on.