Great analogy from Reg Braithwaite about the spate of website shut downs in the US in the last year or so (the latest being JotForm, which appears to be back up, btw).
Closing an entire mall for a case of fraud is the kind of thing that creates a ghost town. As the anger recedes, you know that in a few days you will get your mall reopened. You start placing calls to PR firms to get stories about the mall in the papers and on the news, you need to pressure them into reopening the mall and fix the damage to your reputation, fast. You also call a meeting with the firm you hire to scout for new locations. You won't be expanding here.
This town is no longer friendly for business.
Read the whole article here.
Is the US truly "no longer friendly for business"? I think that might be pushing it, but it's certainly slowly driving there. I haven't travelled to the US in the last few years, even though I would like to, and I'll continue to avoid doing so in the future (unless I really need to for work), because of its insane anti-traveller attitude. I moved all my domains off GoDaddy after their debacle (but they're not hosting user-generated contents and they're on what I believe is a somewhat better host, DNSimple). My servers are in Germany.
Ultimately, the apparent abundance of capital in Silicon Valley will remain a draw for startups for some time, but smart startups would be well advised to host somewhere else.
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