Just because you have a higher market share does not equate to higher quality service. Comcast or ATT customers should know this fairly well.
Godaddy markets to people that are beginners and quite honestly would not know a good host from a poor one. They simply don't have the technical knowledge or experience. They know they want to start a website and that's about it. Godaddy is quite happy to aim their marketing efforts for those new users and take advantage of their naivety. When you place an order through godaddy you are barraged with ad-copy and up-sales all the way through the order process. Up-sale, up-sale, up-sale that's godaddy's business model. I can't tell you how many times I've seen someone buy a couple domains from Godaddy and end up with a hosting plan for each domain. Completely unnecessary, but the novice does not know better.
Godaddy also advertises quite well. Simply ask someone off the street where they would register a domain and it's a good bet they would say godaddy... they see it on T.V. or hear it on the radio so of course I would expect them to have a higher market share then say.. rackspace, lunar pages, hostgator et cetera.
As far as Unlimited, that is purely marketing and works because majority of people don't read the TOS. That was hardly my issue with shared linux packages. I've dealt with godaddy shared plans and VPS(windows) servers. So you're not the only one speaking from experience, which is exactly why I don't use them any longer and never recommend them to anyone. I started creating sites in the 90's I've gone from base html to cold fusion programming to php. I don't use "cheap" hosting. I use hosting that meets my needs for specific situations as should everyone. I've dealt with many hosting companies over the years. From basic shared packages, VPS, dedicated and colos. I never recommend godaddy because from shared packages to VPS any time I've had someone have server issues it's been an utter nightmare with customer service and they madly over load their servers. This may not have been your experience, count yourself as one of the lucky ones.
As for SOPA, a conversation on that can very easily fall into a 'political' TOS violation. I'll say the legislature was not as simple as 'stop' piracy. You may not care about Godaddy's stance on the subject, however many godaddy customers did. Which was proven as Godaddy had over 37,000 domain transfers in a matter of a couple days and continued to hemerage customers.
No one needs to take your word, or mine for that matter in regards to hosting. People can and should do their own research to find a company that fits their needs. There is a guy around here that sells hosting. I'd bet bottom dollar he doesn't over load his servers half as much as godaddy and could offer anyone here a package that would fit their 'starter' needs.
