I'd like to take the time and expand on what others have said. In particular, I was prompted by this bit: "to most people, their domain and availability are important parts of their brand..."

First, I think that's only true of competent web only companies. I really believe that most users are not really that concerned or interested in those technical details or the risks associated with using a less than competent registrar/hosting provider.

For many companies, availability is closely tied to cost, especially at smaller firms. And they are more than willing to sacrifice availability or not pay extra to be insured a certain level of availability. Additionally, for many companies their web presence is purely optional and not their primary means of generating profit. Availability is definitely not the most important thing.

In fact, I've seen more and more small companies shift to simply using Facebook instead of setting up their own page. They don't care about a custom domain the same way many technical users might care.

I guess my point is that the vast majority of people aren't really all that competent or interested on the workings of the internet. Nor are they interested in paying for high availability. This is GoDaddy's market.