An unusually accusing news item caught my attention today. Not that it’s particularly unusual to see an accusing news item, that is. But in this case, the content of the accusation was certainly out of the ordinary.

A news post on the (apparently French) website of Reporters Without Borders revealed that hosting giant Go Daddy had pulled down 10 sites dealing with human rights in China.

The story seems to suggest that Go Daddy failed to offer an explanation – a situation that prompted Reporters Without Borders to voice the perfectly reasonable opinion that the “situation of online free expression in China is difficult enough already, so foreign companies need to act with the utmost transparency.”

The article suggests that the takedowns could conceivably be the result of the Chinese government pressuring the company to take down sites that are blocked in China. This, also, is not a completely improbable notion, although it already seems like the least likely of a dozen possibilities.

The article cites as its source the account of a site called Boxun News (a site with which I am not personally well acquainted), which offers a report (attributed to “boxun”) on the interaction with Go Daddy that led to the shutdown.

I have my doubts about this story too. A less-than-fluent English rendering of a roughly-disguised firsthand account doesn’t strike me as journalism in the sense I’ve come to understand it. And it’s not precisely what I’d consider news either. But it’s out there. And, in evidence of the Internet’s playing-field-leveling effect, it is a sort of “issue” simply by virtue of its existence.

It’s probably only old hat if you’re a regular reader of news or forums that deal specifically with Web hosting (an assumption I’m not ready to make about the Reporters Without Borders folks), but Web hosts take down customer sites all the time, for all kinds of reasons. And one of the unifying characteristics of Web hosting customers is they make websites.

Rarely does a customer like having his or her site taken down, right or wrong. And quite often those jilted customers respond by, well, making a website.

It’s always a war of words. But very rarely, in my experience, does the Web hosting company pass up the opportunity to tell its side of the story. So I was curious, mostly, about the fact that Go Daddy hadn’t responded to the request from Reporters Without Borders.

According to Go Daddy (which got back to me almost immediately, it’s worth noting) that matter is in the process of being worked out right now.

Elizabeth Driscoll, VP of public relations says:

“A reporter posted a story on this topic today without discussing the accusations directly with Go Daddy to find out what happened. We are working with her now. While we can not reveal detail about the complaint, in accordance with our privacy policies, we can assure you it was not a complaint or request made by or on behalf of the Chinese government and has nothing to do with politics or content.”

Thankfully, it seems Go Daddy is not operating under the influence of the Chinese government at the moment. In fact, Driscoll also offered a more specific comment on the complaint that triggered the situation:

“Go Daddy received a complaint regarding the server in question and allegations of ‘attacks’ involving that server. Upon conclusion of our investigation, Go Daddy found the server was being used in a manner which seriously violates our terms of service.  We contacted the client and asked their site administrator to move from our servers.”

Bob Parsons excitedly reported in a blog posting that Go Daddy has issued a pair of new television ads, both featuring the ever-present "Go Daddy Girl" Candice Michelle.

For anybody who's not quite up to speed, Michelle is the well-endowed model from the original Go Daddy Super Bowl ad that caused such a controversy almost two years ago.

Go Daddy Productions, the company Go Daddy started after the original advertising project to create its own ads, delivers more of the same with the new spots. Michelle shows up unexpectedly at an event (a golf game; the christening of a bizarrely named boat), frolics suggestively and somehow ends up soaking wet.

The ads themselves didn't really do anything for me - they fall a little short of each of their goals of being titillating, funny or offensive. But they do pose a couple of interesting questions. Most notably, how do you market domain names to the mass audience?

With each of these new ads, it becomes clearer that Go Daddy is trying to recapture what it had with the original Super Bowl ad. And it seems more likely that what Go Daddy really craves is the controversy.

It's an understandable temptation, since the original ad did coincide with the company's rise to dominance, and marked the beginning of the particular cult of personality Go Daddy has built up around Parsons.

In the title of his post, Parsons writes "I get accused of going too far - again." But in the post itself, he never explains who accused him of going too far, or when, or how. Having seen the ads, I suspect the answer is "nobody," or that Parsons is referring more specifically to the need for Go Daddy to edit out certain parts of the "internet only versions" from the versions destined for TV. But there's a pretty big gap between basic television broadcast standards and real controversy.

But then Web hosts seem to be convinced controversy will win them customers, from C I Host with its tattooed "human billboards" to Globat with its sex-taping pitchman. It's a tough business to be the most tasteless.

The thing I'm left wondering is how effective these tactics really are at winning over customers. Sure, they may get attention, but does meeting some lunatic with "C I Host" tattooed on his head make the average person any more likely to need a Web site?

Interestingly, buried amid the mayhem of Go Daddy's new "Golf" ad is a real effort at a compelling argument for domains to the mass market. The pitch is that "life is full of dot-com moments," and it is at those moments, of course, that we ought to turn to Go Daddy.

That might be true. I'd really be interested to know for sure how much of Go Daddy's appeal comes from its marketing and how much from the fact that it charges as little as $2 for a domain.

Of course, if somebody has a better idea than Go Daddy about how to sell domain names, they're clearly not putting it into practice, because Go Daddy is definitely selling more domains than them, whomever they are.

Also, I think it's cool that the Bob Parsons' brother's advice (near the bottom of the blog post) is a line from a Trooper song. Irrelevant, perhaps, but it's not often this line of work affords an opportunity to mention Canadian classic rock. I relish such opportunities.

Tags: go daddy, advertising, candice michelle, controversy

In Go Daddy's press release, CEO Bob Parsons said:

"With more than a billion wireless phone users estimated worldwide, there will be more and more demand for mobile content. Incorporating .mobi templates into WebSite Tonight is another example of an innovation available only from Go Daddy to help you get in on the mobile Internet revolution."

Go Daddy is one of many hosts offering this kind of tool. Hostway, for example, launched a .mobi site builder in August.

Both Go Daddy and Hostway are part of a pretty significant group of Internet companies expressing their excitement about the new domain. The distinction, in this case, is that it's a domain extension that classifies its content by audience, rather than by company type or country. And, of course, that the registry intends to enforce certain standards for mobile-formatted Web sites.

I'll admit I'm a mobile browsing novice. I use my cell phone for phone calls and the occasional text message, but never to browse the Web. That may be because I'm rarely more than an hour or two away from sitting down at a computer. I have once or twice used the cell phone to call somebody I knew was by a computer and asked them to look something up for me.

I'm interested, however, in the execution of mobile sites. So I asked a friend to recommend a couple. He came up with kicker.mobi, BMW.mobi and weather.mobi. All are very well put together sites, but they fail to answer a pretty basic question I have about the .mobi domain.

That is: what's the point?

Bear with me. I'm not condemning the .mobi domain. I'm actually asking the question.

I type "google.mobi" (a site that strikes me as a potentially useful addition to a mobile phone) into my PC's Web browser, and I am redirected to www.google.com/mobile/, a site that explains, among other things, that I can access Google's mobile search by keying "google.com" into my phone.

Google, by most accounts a pretty forward thinking Web company, doesn't seem to have invested a tremendous amount of energy into employing its .mobi domain extension.

Of course, Google built its mobile-formatted site before the .mobi domain ever existed. But it appears to have solved the matter of having the mobile site happily coexist with Google proper on the .com domain via a fairly simple redirect. I could be wrong, but I'm assuming that recognizing the mobile OS/browser and redirecting those users to the mobile-formatted site is within the means of a modestly sophisticated developer.

So yes, it makes sense for a company with a large, complex Web site, basically impossible to browse from a cell phone - let's say Cisco - to create a mobile version of that site, formatted for viewing on mobile devices and containing a limited selection of information (it has).

And it makes sense for that company to register the .mobi extension of its regular Web address (it has) and point that .mobi address at its mobile-formatted site (it has).

But given the development that has already taken place, and the relative simplicity (I'm assuming) of adding that redirect for mobile devices to the .com site, it seems to me that the company would point mobile users arriving at its .com site to the mobile formatted site (and, once again, it has).

So since keying either cisco.com or cisco.mobi into my phone's browser brings me to the same site (it does; I checked), that would make the .mobi extension, in this case, redundant.

While I have no trouble believing that companies like Go Daddy and Hostway are genuinely enthusiastic about new browsing technologies and the development of the mobile Web, I also have little trouble believing that those companies, both registrars offering .mobi domains, are equally enthusiastic about the opportunity to take $14.99 per year and $35 per year, respectively, for every .mobi domain registered.

Back, then, to my question. Is there a circumstance under which only a .mobi domain will do?

Maybe there is a service of particular use to mobile users with no pc-based equivalent. But wouldn't a .com do in that case, too?

I'm asking. If anybody can offer an example of a site that would be better off on a .mobi domain (hypothetical is fine; real-world example with link is even better), then please, by all means, avail yourself of the "post comment" link.

Tags: domains, dot-mobi, mobile web