GoDaddy has been shrouded in controversy for shutting down sites that support the Stop Online Piracy Act.  They lost a lot of customers when their SOPA support was made public, but was able to regain trust when they announced back in December that they no longer support the act.

Now, Go Daddy is reinventing their image.  They will no longer be just a service that provides web hosting – they’ve gone into philanthropy.

The Parsons Foundation, created by Renee and Bob Parsons – founder and Executive Chairman of GoDaddy.com, will donate a combined amount of $5 million to the Southwest Center for HIV/AIDS.  The first $3.5 million will go to the construction of the center and provide support for prevention, wellness, community outreach and testing programs, while the other $1.5 million is part of an incentive donation.

The Parsons are now challenging others to match their donations so that more can benefit from their project.

“Bob and I hope others will be inspired to help the Southwest Center for HIV/AIDS,” Renee Parsons said. “This center is a first of its kind because it brings domestic violence counseling and other emotional support together with medical aid all under one roof. Patients at our new center are going to get some of the best care available anywhere in the U.S.”

The Parsons Foundation Center for Health, Education and Wellness will be created at 1101 N. Central Ave., in the building that formerly housed the Phoenix NBC TV affiliate, KPNX. The new facility is expected to be completed by the end of 2012 and will include a comprehensive medical center, mental health counseling rooms, as well as classrooms where community-based health workshops and support groups will meet needs of men, women, youth and families.

“This full-service center is such a critical piece of our work – especially for those in our community who do not have access to integrated healthcare and educational support programs. Bob and Renee’s generous donation is so inspiring because it means the difference between opening soon and opening sometime next year,” said Carol Poore, President and CEO, Southwest Center for HIV/AIDS. “Five million dollars is more than we’ve ever received from a single donor … when Bob says they want to make a difference, he really means it.”

Go Daddy’s new image

Warren Adelman replaced Bob Parsons as Go Daddy’s CEO in December, and he’s now faced with the tough challenge of cleaning the company’s image as well as reinventing their services.  The first thing Adelman had to fix was the SOPA debacle.  According to him, he wasn’t aware of the decision to support SOPA–it was a unilateral decision that wasn’t thoroughly thought out.

Ben Huh of Cheezburger Network threatened to move all 1,000 of his company’s Web domains off Go Daddy if they didn’t stop supporting SOPA.  So Adelman had to clean up the mess in order to appease such influential and angry subscribers.

Before the Go Daddy boycott, which was scheduled for December 29th, 2011, Adelman stated that they no longer support SOPA and will not support any bill or act related to or similar to SOPA, such as PIPA.

Aside from dealing with the whole SOPA mess, Adelman needs to clean up their overall brand image.  Go Daddy is known for their cleavage-revealing, booty-shaking, sexified Super Bowl ads, and Parsons’ infamous video of shooting an elephant in Africa posted on his site.  Adelman wants people to know that those are not Go Daddy qualities – Go Daddy is made up of hardworking people who do good things.

“Unfortunately, one bullet can wipe away tons of good work,” Adelman said. ”But these are my crosses. I need to explain that that’s not really the company. That was his personal mistake. We have 3,500 people who make up this company and work hard every day to take care of thousands of small businesses. I’m on a journey where I’ll have to prove I’m not that guy, for better or for worse. I’m Canadian. We’re the least offensive people in the world!”

So this year, you can expect more polished ads from Go Daddy.  Also, they recently launched Go Daddy’s Cloud Servers to give users the ability to configure server networks, create server snapshots and manage server resources, all in a single, friendly interface. Cloud Servers, available with either Linux or Windows operating systems, has a more competitive billing model.

“Go Daddy Cloud Servers offers advanced networking features bundled into an affordable, easy-to-use solution,” said IDC analyst Melanie Posey. “This approach is different from competitors’ cloud models and offers customers a high degree of functionality and support at a reasonable price point.”