7 Attention-Grabbing GoDaddy Moments

— -- GoDaddy's latest controversial Super Bowl ad follows other surprising moments over the last several years -- from global politics to technology debates.

The company has made a name for its web domain registering business through its provocative GoDaddy ads, many of which feature scantily-clad women and race car driver Danica Patrick.

On Tuesday, the company, based in Scottsdale, Arizona, said it was pulling its latest Super Bowl ad, which some said made light of puppy mills. In the 30-second ad, a golden retriever puppy falls out of a truck but makes its way over train tracks and through a storm to find the way back home only to be embraced by its owner and told that she has sold the dog on a website she had just built with GoDaddy.

In a statement, the company said, "This morning we previewed GoDaddy's Super Bowl spot on a popular talk show, and shortly after a controversy started to swirl about Buddy, our puppy, being sold online. The responses were emotional and direct. Many people urged us not to run the ad. The net result? We are pulling the ad from the Super Bowl. You'll still see us in the Big Game this year, and we hope it makes you laugh. Finally, rest assured, Buddy came to us from a reputable and loving breeder in California. He's now part of the GoDaddy family as our Chief Companion Officer and he's been adopted permanently by one of our longtime employees."

Here are some other eyebrow-raising moments in the company's recent history.

1. RateMyCop.com site shut down

In 2008, GoDaddy shut down what Wired magazine described as a police watchdog site, RateMyCop.com. RateMyCop founder Gino Sesto told Wired that GoDaddy told him that the website was shut down for "suspicious activity." The company says on its website that its service allows the public to police service based on "professionalism, fairness and satisfaction."

"Police departments became uneasy about RateMyCop’s plans to watch the watchers in January, when the Culver City, California, startup began issuing public information requests for lists of uniformed officers," Wired magazine wrote at the time. GoDaddy said the issue wasn't related to the website's content but exceeding its monthly bandwidth allotment.

RateMyCop.com eventually found another domain service.

2. Stopping China domains

In March 2010, GoDaddy said that it was pulling out of China due to new rules at the time that insisted on getting personal information from every new user who wanted to register a website, including photos, addresses and phone numbers. While, the decision to pull out of China followed a similar move by Google, it surprised other technology companies that were choosing to stay.

"We were having to contact Chinese users to ask for their personal information and begrudgingly give it to Chinese authorities," GoDaddy's previous general counsel Christine Jones told Congress. "We decided we didn’t want to become an agent of the Chinese government."

3. Joan Rivers' head on another body

In 2011, GoDaddy teased an ad ahead of the Super Bowl that year by only showing the buxom body of what the company said was a huge Hollywood star. On Super Bowl Sunday, an ad with a computer-edited Joan Rivers debuted with the body of a younger woman.

4. GoDaddy CEO hunts elephant

Later in 2011, PETA lambasted GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons for a four-minute video of an elephant hunt in Zimbabwe on his GoDaddy video site.

Parsons said he participated in the hunt because the elephants were a nuisance destroying crops the local population depended upon for sustenance and threatened the lives of villagers.

"I think if you had all the facts and you knew exactly what was going on and the difference it makes in these people's lives there," he told ABC News Radio at the time, "you'd feel completely different."

5. GoDaddy supports piracy bill, leads to customer boycott

Also in 2011, some GoDaddy customers said they would pull their accounts from the domain company for its support of the controversial copyright bill SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act). But GoDaddy said it was pulling its support for the bill ahead of what had been dubbed "Dump GoDaddy Day."

6. Supermodel makes out with nerd

In 2013, GoDaddy’s Super Bowl ad emphasized that “sexy” can meet “smart and featured model Bar Refaeli making out with then 34-year old background extra actor Jesse Heiman.

7. Woman quits her job in a Super Bowl ad

Last year, Gwen Dean, 36, quit her job as a machine engineer in GoDaddy's Super Bowl ad to focus on her own business. From Yonkers, N.Y., Dean worked on refrigeration for large office buildings, GoDaddy said. Her new website name? PuppetsByGwen.com.

She emailed her boss after the ad aired, giving two week's notice, even though only one week was required, GoDaddy said.