I used Gandi for a long time and switched after they were bought out and registration prices started rising. HN article from 2023 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35080777

After that I've used spaceship.com, NameCheap's rebrand, without complaint and most recently porkbun.com due to support in dnscontrol.

The power of advertising and first-mover advantage. Outside of the tech space, people really only know of godaddy if they want to buy a domain.

Marketing and large captive audience.