Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

How GoDaddy's Quest For Respect Led To an Improbable Partnership With MIT (fastcompany.com)

Posted by timothy on from the with-age-comes-conservatism dept.

harrymcc writes: GoDaddy, the world's biggest domain registrar, remains most famous for its tacky Super Bowl ads and controversial founder, Bob Parsons. But in recent years, the company was sold, hired a CEO from Microsoft and Yahoo, and has made a major effort to reinvent itself as a serious, uncontroversial, technologically-savvy outfit. And now it's partnered with MIT's Media Lab in an ambitious experiment--which I wrote about over at Fast Company--involving placing sensors around downtown Boston to collect big data that could help the small businesses which line the city's streets.

6 of 38 comments (clear)

  1. Sensors... by EmeraldBot · · Score: 2

    Sensors that track customers? Sounds like a very strange definition of uncontroversial, but that's just me...

    --
    "Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
    1. Re:Sensors... by EmeraldBot · · Score: 4, Informative

      Trying to count how many people pass a point is hardly tracking, you moron.

      If you even bothered to read the article half a page down, you'd see there's a timelapse photography of visiting customers. This video is stored on a website we download. Ergo, they're storing videos of people walking by and saving them. And so, there's a permanent record of where these customers were at the time - and let's be honest, when are they ever going to delete this? So yes, you could track someone by seeing these videos, easily.

      Secondly, I did not say anything about whether I agree or not with these measures, I merely expressed surprise that in saying they want to be non-controversial, they immediately jump right into one of the most hot button topics in society today - privacy. I do disagree with it, yes, but that's not the point I made. Next time, maybe not whine on your gut instinct, Anonymous Coward...

      --
      "Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
  2. SOPA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Don't forget they supported SOPA.

  3. Fascist Company by stephanruby · · Score: 3, Informative

    From a company/CEO that endorses SOPA (despite its retraction after the boycott), Gitmo/water boarding (despite the later change after the public outcry), and goes out of its way to help law enforcement cease assets against its own customers without even a court order.

    Putting sensors everywhere in the street to surveil passers-by seems like a perfect continuation of the same fascist big brother government-knows-better mindset. I'm not sure changing the CEO is going to change anything about the company itself, except may be get a CEO that is better at keeping his mouth shut (than the last one).

  4. lost my respect when they started hosting spammers by Indy1 · · Score: 3, Informative

    and ignoring complaints about it.

    http://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/li...

    Thats ok though, IPTABLES fixed that problem.

    --
    Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
  5. Re:lost my respect when they started hosting spamm by tehcyder · · Score: 2
    "Go Daddy" sounds like the title of an amateur incest porno starring a fat bloke with a mustache and a woman on crack in pigtails..

    I really can't imagine who thought this was a good idea, but it doesn't seem to have done their sales any harm.

    It''s obviously true that any advertising or marketing is ok as long as it creates some impression, whether good or bad. In the UK, the "go compare" insurance ads are simultaneously the most hated and most recognisable ones on TV.

    --
    To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it