As if the news that the failure of MoveYourDomain Day wasn’t discouraging enough, here’s more terribleness: GoDaddy actually gained market shares last month while all the bad anti-SOPA sentiment was swarming them.
According to WebHostingInfo, GoDaddy did see a very slight loss of total domains across the month of December, including high profile sites like Wikipedia and Imgur, their global market shares actually increased steadily as the month went on. While the gains were slight, it was more than enough to offset the defections of domain owners from GoDaddy. Yes, there was a minor dip in their market share for the first of December but that was way before GoDaddy started getting all that negative press for their SOPA support so it can hardly even be considered noteworthy to this context.
Looking at the weekly data of global market shares is like reading an abbreviated version of domain owners’ thought bubbles:
November 28, 2011 – “GoDaddy. Internets. So full now.”
December 5, 2011 – “Burp.”
December 12, 2011 – “Feel better now.”
December 19, 2011 – “Yawn. Nap maybe? Mm’hmm.”
December 26, 2011 (SOPA press starts to pick up steam) – “Oh. SOPA? Soup on. Coupon! Space look pretty tonight.”
January 2, 2012 – “Hangovers such super something something. GoDaddy? Mmm, yes, have some.”
Seriously, for every defector that saddled up with new domain registration services someone either transferred their domain to GoDaddy or else just registered a new domain with them. While GoDaddy lost a sizable amount of domains after the great SOPA revelation of Christmas weekend, the loss was entirely offset by the total amount of domains gained after the news of their SOPA support broke.
In the end, what does any of this mean? Well, for one, GoDaddy’s global market shares grew a little despite all the SOPAness of last month meaning the number of people registering domains outside of the U.S. might be considerable enough that GoDaddy doesn’t need to worry about any losses States-side. The second conclusion you can draw from this data, and perhaps more disheartening, is that there’s plenty of people registering domains in the U.S. that simply don’t give a toss about GoDaddy’s politics. Supposing the second conclusion is valid, don’t expect any volte-faces from GoDaddy the next time they find themselves in possession of an unfavorable opinion – they’re not going to lose. So rather than quickly change their mind so as to appease the unsettled masses, expect the domain registrar to lean back, prop their feet up on the desk and casually reply, “Do you see care anywhere on my face?”
Because you likely won’t.