A Letter From Media Temple Founder | Hacker News Reader

A Letter From Media Temple Founder

bin.mediatemple.net

50 pointsdkroy47 comments

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Bummer. GoDaddy is easily the worst company I've had to deal with in over a decade of running 4chan.

Godspeed to the MediaTemple guys!

I would rather Mediatemple had sold themselves to the US Government. :(

Or Kim Dotcom. That would actually be interesting.

I had a similar thought and observe in the letter they reference "new CEO" for GoDaddy.

How so? I know they don't have a great reputation, but I am guessing you have had to deal with a ton of companies while running 4chan. What made GoDaddy stand out?

(Apologies if you've posted an answer to this somewhere else... please provide a link if that's the case!)

We are a competitor to gd but part of what they do is price things low and then make money with add ons and by selling you things at extra cost that you don't really need. MT pricing (who we deal with for some things) is high to begin with. They also have add ons which they make money from but less teaser things and gotchas.

http://www.4chan.org/news?all#39

They essentially suspended 4chan's original .net domain without warning, didn't notify me, then sent me in circles trying to get it back. At the time you couldn't e-mail or call the abuse department. You would leave a message, and they would [never] return your call. The domain was expired/released early, requiring I attempt to get it at auction, and instead a squatter got it.

So if you've ever wondered why 4chan is a .org, that's why. (And we were a .net originally because the site is based on 2chan.net.)

Makes a lot more sense now as to why gd could stand out so much... wow

Thanks moot!

I know GoDaddy has a pretty terrible history, what have you seen specifically?

LMGTFY: https://www.google.com/search?q=godaddy+4chan

I'm curious his personal experience outside of what I could find via Google search

How would he know what you found via Google Search without disclaiming it, or even mentioning that you had searched at all? "Anything other than X, Y, and Z?" would be more polite.

Not to diss MediaTemple or anything, but both GoDaddy's and their lack of good support and high price points make this match somewhat obvious in my eyes.

That's pretty much exactly what you did.

They've earned it though. Every single time I've dealt with MT support it's been a nightmare. The response times are terrible (until you get on twitter and publicly tweet at them) and their support does not understand their own cpanel software well enough to be helpful. Nearly all my support requests (usually for fairly basic things) required "Tier 2" support, which meant at least a 24 hour wait.

This deal seems like a perfect match.

I've had great results with various things that we have at Media Temple over the years as well as their service. (Godaddy is actually a competitor).

As far as why this happened? I think it's because at the price point that MT is at they realized that the pressure from the digital oceans and linodes and similar would end up resulting in an eroding of the demand for what they do. MT is way more expensive even more than low end VPS at Rackspace where we also have some things.

I wonder if Rackspace was in the bidding for MT or how this deal went down. This would have seemed to be an excellent acquisition for them.

Off topic, but I just had to know. I read somewhere that you started 4Chan as a way for people to share images with one another.

My question: When you came up with this idea, did you have any idea what kinds of things the internet would want to share with you? Also, now that you know, any regrets?

On topic: I've only used Godaddy's competitors, but I honestly can't understand how a web host remains in business after they publicly announced that they support a non-open web.

AIUI 4chan was more-or-less an English-language clone of 2chan.

So with both MT founders transitioning out as a result of this acquisition, it's very apparent to me that they wanted to cash out.

All the fluff about how this wont change anything, or how this is better for everybody is just noise. This is how it ends, MT.

Yuck. That's disappointing. It's only a matter of time before MT is inundated with GoDaddy's garbage.

Moving all my domains off GoDaddy was a pain, but not being plastered with 90 sub-offers on my way to checkout is bliss. They have zero respect for customers and are just generally shady in every aspect of business.

>We will continue operating as an independent and autonomous company and our mission will remain unchanged.

That's what they all say.

You just made me sad about Blizzard all over again. I was just starting to come to terms with their demise.

Or any of the amazing small studios EA has picked up and discarded.

Thanks for reminding me about those too.

On the bright side, there is a spiritual successor to Syndicate in the works, I can't recall where I read about it though.

Never expected these guys will sell themselves to a company with questionable reputation.

money rules the world

Money rules the world. Certainly not everything. Not principles, morale and/or conscience. Does it sound too bookish?

Questionable is certainly rounding up

At this point I guess anyone who works for Media Temple has lost confidence in their founder. He stated that he is proud to have been acquired by Godaddy, so that means one of two things. Either he has incredibly poor judgement, or he is flat out lying to his work force.

If its the money, just say so.

This letter combined with all the MT people trying to astroturf the comments on the techcrunch post is pretty ridiculous. It's like they don't realize we are capable of thought.

From the FAQ about the merger:[1]

What about GoDaddy’s reputation in the tech community?

GoDaddy has been transformed in recent months and is essentially a new company. If we did not like what we have seen, we would not have joined the GoDaddy family. They have overhauled their leadership team and attracted tech talent from the best-of-the-best. We love “the new GoDaddy” that CEO Blake Irving and his team have created, especially their new approach with advertising, product focus and UX.

Though neither GoDaddy’s brand nor operations are being integrated into ours, we are excited to be a positive influence on them with how to make even more improvements to better serve the Web pro community

[1] http://weblog.mediatemple.net/2013/10/15/faqs-about-the-goda...

Well of course they are going to say things like this. They know that GoDaddy has a bad reputation, and for good reason. We all have our stories about why GoDaddy is awful.

But let's consider this: a company doesn't get rebuilt in "recent months" from the inside out. Especially one as large and with as much baggage as GoDaddy has.

Secondly, why would GoDaddy buy MediaTemple? I'd bet it has less to do with hoping MediaTemple can help them improve their customer service. Maybe my bet is wrong, but it seems to me that GoDaddy will continue making money the way they have before, which has less to do with customer service and more to do with customer count and customer confusion.

I for one believe MediaTemple will become a lower-barrier service that can be attached to a domain in the checkout process, which will probably increase the quality of package-store-website servers. Unfortunately, this will necessitate an energy focus shift that could put the boutique firms lower on the priority chain.

I think it speaks to GoDaddy's reputation that a portion of this letter was dedicated to talking about GoDaddy's new leadership team and motto, one assumes to assuage any concerns about that reputation's impact on MT. Judging by the comments here...it didn't have the desired effect.

As long it isn't Bob Parson's steering the ship.

So when can we start expecting to see tasteless MT ads during sporting events?

Ah, an american love story: Two obese, dim-witted, overly wealthy hosting companies marrying each other.

Considering MT has made money time and time again citing GoDaddy's faults, issues and outages, it strikes me a bit odd that they would sell out to them. But then another part of me isn't really surprised at all to be honest.

echoing the sentiment here but really; how sad. MT was a staple in my earlier development career.

godaddy is a shit product. this won't hinder MT.

but godaddy is also a shit company. this makes MT a shit company by association, if not definitively.

Sad. I like Media Temple but I dislike GoDaddy more.

Ugh, this is really upsetting. Are there similar alternative services available? I need to find a new host...

Those days when one of the worst companies buys one of the best...

Here is to hoping Enom does not sell out to GoDaddy

Well cash is nice...

I've been with GoDaddy for years. People who blame them for their SOPA stance need to remember there was a lot of support in Congress for SOPA. Was it the best Bill? Nah, that doesn't mean GoDaddy's reputation should be torn to shreds every single time their name comes up on HN. The same people should remember there are a lot of good people at GoDaddy, techies just like them who are trying to earn a living doing a job they love.

People have other valid reasons for not liking GoDaddy that don't involve SOPA. Domain transfer blocking being one of many.

There may be good people at GoDaddy, just like there are good people at the NSA. Doesn't mean we can't have an opinion of the organization in aggregate that is not overall positive.

Why are you so concerned with how GoDaddy is perceived as an organization?

This is some Grade A shilling. Well done.

I've got some domains with GoDaddy, that's it. Does that make it ok for you to make an unfounded and wrong accusation?

edit: Adding a reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shill

The HN's hate for GoDaddy doesn't just stem from the SOPA case. GoDaddy is a very shady business in general, and every now and then some of the borderline evil stuff they do hits the news.

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