That Was Quick: Go Daddy Pulls Its Support of SOPA

Adam Clark Estes

Faced with a Reddit-powered boycott, Go Daddy, the domain registrar and maker of sexy television commercials, will no longer support the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). "Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance, which is why Go Daddy has been working to help craft revisions to this legislation - but we can clearly do better," Go Daddy's new chief executive Warren Adelmanaid in a statement. "It's very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this. Getting it right is worth the wait. Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it." In conclusion, Reddit wins again.

RELATED: Go Daddy Did In Fact Lose A Bunch of Customers Today

Update: Anonymous is going to boycott Go Daddy anyways. "@GoDaddy We do not forgive, We do not forget. We are legion. Expect us. #BoycottGoDaddy," tweeted YourAnonNews shortly after the news broke. They followed up a couple minutes later, "Ohai @GoDaddy lovely DM, but #BoycottGoDaddy is still on. kthxbai ^__^"

RELATED: Reddit Gets Ready to Go Dark to Protest SOPA

Update 2: Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales announced around the same time Go Daddy reversed its stance, "I am proud to announce that the Wikipedia domain names will move away from GoDaddy. Their position on #SOPA is unacceptable to us."

RELATED: Faced with SOPA Protest, One Senator Just Blinked

Update 3: Gizmodo's Sam Biddle spoke to Adelmanaid, the Go Daddy chief executive who's only been on the job for a week (!). The most important revelation that came from their conversation, it seems, is that Go Daddy is not supporting SOPA any more but it's also not actively opposing the bill either. Biddle writes:

Citing "quite a bit of feedback from our customers," Adelman tried to explain GoDaddy's abrupt 180 on the bill. He wouldn't admit that boycotts and near-universal criticism of his firm had anything to do with the decision. Rather, mirroring the statement his company's PR smokestack put out earlier today, he he just doesn't believe SOPA is "ready in its current form." And everyone yelling about SOPA on the internet showed him the light. But when I asked him what aspects of the bill he took issue with, he refused to elaborate at all. Which is odd, given that the company had helped form the bill: "At a certain point we became involved where we provided commentary and provisions on this legislation that addressed areas that people had concern around," Adelman said. What areas did GoDaddy help with? No comment.

So is GoDaddy now in the anti column, alongside Facebook, Google, and AOL?

No.