The abandon ship notice for GoDaddy’s domain registration service, while netting some notable names — Wikipedia, Imgur — apparently failed to have the impact some suspected.

If not for GoDaddy’s waffling on the SOPA/PIPA issue, something that’s discussed at an ad nauseam level across the Internet, the boycott that fizzled wouldn’t have happened. Hype about the GoDaddy boycott was spurred on by the company’s competitors, with Namecheap being the foremost. In order to capitalize on GoDaddy’s PR blunder, Namecheap went on an anti-SOPA promotional tirade, creating a MoveYourDomain Day, where, for every domain transfer, Namecheap donated $1 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation to help the EFF’s fight against SOPA.

After 25,000 transfers, Namecheap upped the donation to $2 a transfer, and have, as of this writing, raised $61872 for the EFF.

That said, reports indicate that, despite Namecheap’s relatively successful promotion, the GoDaddy boycott largely fell flat. As indicated, there were some high profile losses for GoDaddy, but according to TechDirt’s research, on the day the boycott/MoveYourDomain Day was supposed to take place (12/29), GoDaddy gaining more domains than they lost:

Looking at the results from DailyChanges shows that GoDaddy actually had a strongly positive day, netting 20,748 more domains at the end of the day than the beginning. On transfers alone, there were nearly double the number of transfers in as out…

While the boycott may have fallen flat, at least for GoDaddy abandonment, the initial backlash was strong enough to make GoDaddy reconsider their stances on the protection acts. Was this a convenient change of heart for the “risque” domain registrar? Perhaps, but once GoDaddy started losing customers, it quickly changed its course.

The question is, was it for marketing purposes — as in, please don’t leave us — or did GoDaddy actually sit down and reconsider their position on the protection acts? I know where I’d place my wager. What about you? Lets us know what you think.