34 ms·

Google Domains is out of beta

143 points by Garbage 5y ago

andyfleming 5y ago
Semi-related: What alternative is your registrar of choice and why?
- sneak 5y ago
  Additionally: Are there any good registrars that support U2F/FIDO/WebAuthn (aka hardware tokens) for 2FA? Mine only does TOTP and I would like the security provided by hardware.
  - mminer237 5y ago
    Namecheap does: https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/10102/45/how-can-i-use-the-u2f-method-for-twofactor-authentication/ https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx...
- anderspitman 5y ago
  https://TakingNames.io https://TakingNames.io obviously. Disclaimer: I run it.
  - DomainEater247 5y ago
    I'm curious what goes into running one? Do you need to have stable NameServer's with static IPs that have 100% uptime? Why create one?
    - anderspitman 5y ago
      It's very easy to get started, and easy to progressively add services. The most important distinction is between a domain registrar and a domain reseller. As far as I know, most start out as resellers (Namecheap started as an Enom reseller. AWS still resells Gandi). Being a legit registrar is actually fairly expensive. Reselling complexity depends on the upstream registrar. Most of the big ones have reseller programs, including white label services. TakingNames.io uses Name.com, which doesn't require anything official. I just sell domains using Stripe for payments then use the Name.com API to buy the domain. Then I forward DNS changes using their API as well. Currently I default to using Name.com's nameservers, but users can set custom nameservers and I may run my own eventually.
- imilk 5y ago
  porkbun.com is great
- mminer237 5y ago
  I use Porkbun because they're typically the cheapest, tbh. They have a really nice interface too, but my registrar isn't something I interact with more than once a year typically. As long as they aren't shady like GoDaddy, it doesn't matter that much. There's tons of good options.
  - alligatorplum 5y ago
    +1 to Porkbun. I think cloudlfare sells domains at-cost so if you want something cheaper than they might be worth looking into. But I have been a happy porkbun customer for a few years and they are my go to recommendation to anyone who asks.
  - imilk 5y ago
    Also have quite a few great easter eggs on their site. Always nice when a company has a bit of personality.
- PascLeRasc 5y ago
  Porkbun has been good to me, but I can't get it to work for iCloud custom domains.
DoItToMe81 5y ago
With my experiences with Google in the past, I would never trust my domains with them. Not my personal ones, and especially not my business ones. I also don't trust their customer support.
snek_case 5y ago
Does that mean it's cancelled then? ;)
- henriquez 5y ago
  It means your domains have been canceled by an algorithm that determined your account is in violation of Google's terms of service. Hopefully you know a Google engineer or have experience starting Twitter mobs.
  - dtparr 5y ago
    'Have experience starting Twitter mobs' is something I'm excited to start seeing on resumés soon. Followed by the discussion over whether that shows key leadership/organization abilities or not, a la the "Wow Raiding Guild Leader" debates of the late 2000's.
  - sumedh 5y ago
    > Hopefully you know a Google engineer or have experience starting Twitter mobs. or you can start a Tell HN thread here and hope it blows up and then someone from Google can look at it.
JacobHenner 5y ago
Over/under for how long it'll be before it's shut down?
- munk-a 5y ago
  Considering it just left beta... I'd give it three weeks.
NKosmatos 5y ago
They’re also giving a 20% discount for getting domains from them. Keep in mind the Google domains is not available in all countries: https://support.google.com/domains/answer/4639612?hl=en https://support.google.com/domains/answer/4639612?hl=en
blindseer 5y ago
lol no thanks. Congrats to all the engineers that have worked on this and getting this out the door, but I don't think anyone should use or recommend these Google services, especially when they have been SO inconsistent about the life, longevity and future of their products. I'm curious to be proven otherwise (and open to criticism of my claims), especially when other services have existed for a while that provide the same functionality, or offer better tie in with alternative products (hosting, pages, workers, lambdas, compute etc).
- vinceguidry 5y ago
  Now that it's out of beta I should probably move my domain to somewhere more trustworthy.
  - Tostino 5y ago
    Could be sunset any day now. It's "legacy".
  - s0rce 5y ago
    Thats exactly what I did. Didn't feel like paying $6/mo for gmail. Moved to zoho.
    - vinceguidry 5y ago
      I'm on fastmail, happy to pay for reliable service.
    - a5aAqU 5y ago
      Another option is Gandi.net, which offers free email with domains.
- mmastrac 5y ago
  I got burned by the apps domain fiasco this year and it was the final nail in the coffin for me. I'm minimizing my reliance on Google now.
reset-password 5y ago
Judging by my own initial thoughts to this and the confirming commentary, I'd say that Google sure has built quite a reputation.
- bushbaba 5y ago
  To be fair they just raised GCP prices this week.
- AceJohnny2 5y ago
  That's the point of brands! I don't understand how they don't understand the damage they've done to themselves in certain circles. Clearly their brand is still valuable to a wider audience. I've long wondered why companies don't put their more experimental stuff under a different brand ("X by Google"-- no not that X), and promote them to full brand-name once they've gone reliable. Probably they want such experiments to get a boost from being associated with the better brand, and they figure the brand stain of stopping those experiments isn't so bad. But these things build up over time, and each individual product manager probably don't think they're the last straw... Another thought is that Google comes from an era of much more experimental web. Now the Internet is a much more established market, and platform stability is more a premium. Google is having trouble transitioning from their wilder younger days (of just a few years ago) to a more reliable company.
  - chaostheory 5y ago
    > I've long wondered why companies don't put their more experimental stuff under a different brand ("X by Google"-- no not that X), and promote them to full brand-name once they've gone reliable. They still have most of the Alphabet to do this too. I'm still surprised they didn't already do it years ago.
- oh_sigh 5y ago
  Query your non-hn friends about Google. I swear there are people who just ctrl-f for Google on hn and post the same "when's it going to be cancelled?" I would wager that almost all of these posters just happen to have philosophical/political problems with Google too.
Doches 5y ago
But...why? I mean, I get it -- domain registrars aren't exactly at the top of my list for easy-to-use, reliable, trustworthy partners that I want to build a core part of my business or identity on top of. But I'm damned sure that Google isn't either, after 15+ years of launching or acquiring fantastic tools and swiftly burying them in the Google Graveyard [1]. Say what you want about Namecheap or GoDaddy; at least being a registrar is core to their business and not just a lark. [1] - https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/
- Spivak 5y ago
  Not Route53? I've pretty much just bought my domains and completely forgotten they existed for years secure that they'll just autorenew.
- mminer237 5y ago
  Namecheap and Porkbun are actually very easy-to-use, reliable, and trustworthy. I don't think Google is trying to actually be better than other solutions. They're not competitive on price or support. I think their whole plan is to capture people using GCP since they're already there anyway, a la Route53 or GoDaddy. Why add complexity to your system with multiple providers to save a few bucks a year or help with theoretical issues?
  - sodality2 5y ago
    Porkbun is amazing. I had a problem with my FIDO2 key (there was no password reset path for you if you still had your FIDO2 key), so I let support know. Less than a day later their engineers got back to me letting me know they had added the feature and deployed it. Everyone there is super nice as well :)
  - mardifoufs 5y ago
    Namecheap recently suspended an account because of a tweet thread speculating that a domain was maybe related to abusive behavior. Turns out it wasn't at all. It was so arbitrary even the people who were speculating were surprised by that decision. Even Google isn't sk arbitrary as to base their ban decisions on random Twitter discussion https://twitter.com/Namecheap/status/1489485337885921284 https://twitter.com/Namecheap/status/1489485337885921284
MikeDelta 5y ago
What if Google suddenly blocks your domains because the algo said so, and no way to talk to a human? I am having difficulties putting trust back into this relationship.
- wohfab 5y ago
  Do you know GoDaddy?
  - munk-a 5y ago
    Yea - they're an absolutely terrible service that has lost a lot of ground to more relevant comparisons in recent years. Personally I've had no issue with webnames.ca but I assume that's just a Canada thing.
  - ______-_-______ 5y ago
    This is being downvoted but I think it's an interesting question. If your life was on the line and you had to choose—would you do business with Google, or GoDaddy?
    - ProAm 5y ago
      I would choose not to play.
pasiaj 5y ago
I started using Google Apps for Domains pretty much the day it came out. 3 of my companies are using Gsuite right now. But all my domains tied to a Google Account that could get cancelled with no recourse? No, I think I'll pass.
ProAm 5y ago
I would never trust google with a product that isn't ads for long term use.
a5aAqU 5y ago
Google's "customer support" is so bad, I think it would be a huge mistake to let them control your domains. Dealing with Google's "support" has been a nightmare over and over on many unrelated issues. They also abandon many projects or hold you hostage in extremely inconvenient ways.[1] [1] https://www.androidauthority.com/gsuite-legacy-free-edition-3093722/ https://www.androidauthority.com/gsuite-legacy-free-edition-...
- chaostheory 5y ago
  People have been complaining about this for years. Besides Google Cloud, have they addressed this or do they keep ignoring it? Does anyone know if Google Cloud has customer service that's equivalent to AWS?
  - sofixa 5y ago
    They have addressed it with Google One. GCP does have support, but the things I've heard about it from are meh ( still better than Azure or OVH though).
  - a5aAqU 5y ago
    It isn't just Google Cloud. I've had absolutely terrible experiences with several Google support departments. It's often impossible or difficult to resolve the problems. A domain isn't the kind of thing that you can quickly move somewhere else when things go wrong.
    - mission_failed 5y ago
      Especially when the domain is locked and you cannot get access to your account
- lern_too_spel 5y ago
  I could be convinced to put up with the lack of customer support if the price is right, but the price is higher than competitors. I'll stick with Cloudflare Registrar.
- 5y ago
MrWiffles 5y ago
How long until Google kills this one? TAKING ALL BETS!
mkl95 5y ago
What do they offer vs some powerful competitor like Namecheap?
- ugjka 5y ago
  24/7 surveillance by AI algorithms for any infringement of TOS
rectang 5y ago
Tying your domain to a Google account — or any centralized megaprovider account — seems fraught with risk. What happens when Google bans your account for some misstep, or even a mistake on Google's part, in some other service? Does the domain just expire because you can't access your account? At least if you separate your email provider and your domain, if the email provider decides to ban you you can move the domain to a different email provider and maintain continuity. But if the domain registrar bans you, what then? It seems as though the wisest move is to keep your domains hitched to the most minimal account you can — avoiding centralized service providers such as Google, Amazon, etc.
- paxys 5y ago
  I use Google Domains with an isolated single-purpose Google account. Emails from it are forwarded to my main account. It is easily the best domain registrar out there IMO.
  - remram 5y ago
    A few weeks back I couldn't add/edit/remove domain names that start with a _ and contained an accent. That's when I found out how good their support really is, even for a bug on their side. Probably best to use a service from a company primarily in the business of offering paid services.
  - cute_boi 5y ago
    Have you tried cloudflare? They take 0% profit, and should be better than Google.
  - rectang 5y ago
    I'm skeptical that accounts with megaproviders can effectively be isolated. If one account gets banned, and Google determines that another account is owned by the same person, they may well ban the other account too. The solution is to register your domain (at least) with a provider that doesn't have so much insight into their users. Again, this applies not only to Google, but also to Amazon and others. It's really a problem with centralized reputation.
  - 5y ago
pyrale 5y ago
I clicked on the link half-expecting that "out of beta" was the jargon to say that Google closed another product.
- monktastic1 5y ago
  Out of the Google beta frying pan and into the Google dumpster fire.
  - adamors 5y ago
    This whole thread has tickled my funny bone in ways I didn’t expect.
blakesterz 5y ago
"We launched Google Domains in 2015 to be the easiest place to find, buy, and manage a domain." I'm sure we're all painfully aware of the longevity of many Google services that are considered "in production", there's a long list of things shut down. BUT is it common for something to be in BETA for 7 years? That seems like a REALLY long time for something to be beta anywhere. Is that common at Google?
- zerocrates 5y ago
  Gmail was famously "beta" for a very long time but I don't know how long exactly. A quick search seems to say 5 years?
- andrewguenther 5y ago
  Pretty common for Google. Gmail was in beta for five years, Google Docs and Calendar I believe were also in beta for similar lengths of time.
joeconway 5y ago
If you’re buying a domain, you should consider http://gandi.net/ http://gandi.net/ No affiliation, I just love it and see people in this thread rightly lamenting godaddy, and surprisingly no mention of this gem of a company
- a5aAqU 5y ago
  Another vote for Gandi. Each domain also comes with 2 email accounts and extra forwarders.
- anderspitman 5y ago
  Fun fact: Gandi is what AWS uses under the hood when you buy a domain from them.
- vincentmarle 5y ago
  Gandi still offers services in Russia and Belarus [1] while Namecheap discontinued its services to them [2]. No affiliation with Namecheap, just a happy customer of a company that is not supporting a dictatorial regime. [1] https://news.gandi.net/en/2022/03/for-all-the-people-and-one-internet-against-escalation-and-war/ https://news.gandi.net/en/2022/03/for-all-the-people-and-one... [2] https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/1/22956581/russia-ukraine-namecheap-ends-service-war-crimes https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/1/22956581/russia-ukraine-na...
  - sodality2 5y ago
    Providing services to Russians =/= supporting a dictatorial regime. That's very reductionist in my view. Many Russians simply cannot up and leave their country at once, or worse, maybe they are running a website that broadcasts against the Russian government, and Namecheap was one of their only options. I don't think it's as clear cut as "provide them service" but it's more nuanced than that/
  - bartvk 5y ago
    > Gandi still offers services in Russia What does that tell you?
acdha 5y ago
In an amusing bit of naming similarity, discontinuing “Google Apps for Domains” is why I migrated my last service _off_ of Google. Not going back.
wohfab 5y ago
Oh man, this comments... The number of products, Google actually "killed" and not just rename, merge into another product, or develop further under a new name, is quite low. And frankly, most people, complaining about product lifetime, probably never even used any of those products at all. Yes, killedbygoogle.com is fun, but come on...
- munk-a 5y ago
  Hey - I'm still personally sore over iGoogle. They killed off an absolutely trivial to use RSS reader - I made heavy use of iGoogle while it still existed... and they killed it off to try and save Google+ which they then proceeded to also abandon. I've definitely felt the burn of Google just randomly killing off a useful thing for some opaque marketing decision that turned out to be extremely ill-advised.
- sigmonsays 5y ago
  but it's true...
- MikeDelta 5y ago
  I'm not worried about them killing the service, I am worried about them blocking the domains of my business, for some vague reason, and me having no ability to talk to anyone to have it solved. I am sure it doesn't happen often, but if it does it sure is not going to be to me.
  - wohfab 5y ago
    But that can happen with every domain registrar, can't it?
- rurp 5y ago
  So you're saying all I have to worry about is my account being nuked by an opaque algorithm or the price suddenly being jacked up 20x, like say the Maps API?! Great, sign me up!
- rendall 5y ago
  > The number of products, Google actually "killed"... is quite low. That is an extraordinary claim, but I'm listening. https://killedbygoogle.com https://killedbygoogle.com has 264 listings. Are you saying that if we excluded those that were actually renamed or folded into other products, that it would reduce 264 products to some number that is "quite low"?
hashamali 5y ago
I've found Google domains to be considerably more expensive than Namecheap. Anyone have a good reason to use it over other registrars?
- bradfa 5y ago
  I used to be a Namecheap customer, I have been using Google Domains for a few years now. Namecheap isn't that much cheaper, maybe a dollar or two per year in my quick look just now. I've found Google Domains really easy to use for my personal domains, including for dynamic DNS. So far it's just worked and I've been happy with it. Not to say that Namecheap was hard to use, just that Google is pretty easy and the cost difference isn't enough to make me want to consider switching back to Namecheap. I do not recall why I stopped using Namecheap, it was a while ago.
midnitewarrior 5y ago
Google has a product out of beta? Time to shut it down.
jghn 5y ago
As someone leery of tying my domain to my Google account, I'm curious what people recommend for this use case. I have a vanity domain currently hosted on a web hosting platform. These days it only gets used to forward the email of a few people to their contemporary email accounts, all gmail based. As I no longer use the web hosting, storage, or anything else like that I'd love to find something cheaper that can just handle the email forwarding. I like the idea of using Google as for many things I trust them more than a smaller company. But there are too many stories out there of people having no idea what they did wrong and losing all access to their account, with no recourse.
- bxparks 5y ago
  Cloudflare Domain Registrar. They sell at-cost, so $9.95/year for a .com/.net domain. But don't use your gmail account as the admin account. For email forwarding, Cloudflare Email Routing looks promising. I'm just about to give it a try. It's currently in beta though.
  - dazc 5y ago
    Agree, cloudflare is ideal for parent's use case although you have to join a waiting list of several weeks for forwarding to be activated (my experience anyways).
    - et-al 5y ago
      From my recent personal experience, Cloudflare email forwarding is available without a waiting list now. Another poster a month ago said it took a week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30129770 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30129770
  - srhngpr 5y ago
    Happy customer of Cloudflare Email Routing - it works exceptionally well. I've paired it with Amazon SES for the occasional time I need to send emails from custom domain.
sneak 5y ago
Now seems like a good time to point out that Google is fully aware of the linkages between all of your various Google accounts (work, personal 1, personal 2, side project, other domain, etc). Both mobile platforms allow multiple Google account login and if you use one account for work slack and one account for personal gmail then thanks to your phone OS's giant gaping per-app sandbox hole, big daddy G can see all of your credentials are being used on the same device and connect them together as a single user. This means that any itty bitty TOS violation on one account means you potentially lose all your accounts. Accidentally contradict the WHO (who, for example, said not to wear masks) in a YouTube comment and get your personal video watching account TOSed for posting fake news? Accidentally mention an ITAR/SDN country by name in a comment field in a Google Wallet/Pay transaction? Send a zipped malware sample to a colleague for analysis from your gmail? Say goodbye to your Play Store apps published under your work account, AND your domain names registered under your side project account, AND your Google Voice number, AND all your cloud instances on your GCE account, AND all your YouTube uploads on the video account, AND all your files in Google Drive, et c. You also lose ability to reset all of your accounts that have your @gmail.com address as the login name, and you lose the ability to even log into any accounts for which you may have used that "Login with Google" button. Google is not trustworthy. Don't give them your money or data. Register a domain with someone who isn't Google, and point it somewhere that isn't Gmail. There are step-by-step instructions on how to do this on my website.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
aluminussoma 5y ago
Since complaining on Hacker News is the only way to effectively reach Google employees, I'll say that as a customer I am confused at the offerings of Google Domains and GCP Cloud Domains (via Cloud DNS). I recently registered a domain via Cloud Domains and it shows up under Google Domains.
- qmarchi 5y ago
  They're backed by the same registrar, so it makes sense. Disc. Googler, not in Domains.
- sofixa 5y ago
  > Since complaining on Hacker News is the only way to effectively reach Google employees, That's an exaggeration. You can find a bunch of them on Twitter or LinkedIn. Joking aside, B2B services have support, and consumers can pay for it via Google One.
Jabbles 5y ago
Hopefully incidents like [1] will never happen outside of the beta. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23417046 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23417046
- Folcon 5y ago
  Seeing as they took down the blog post, link: https://web.archive.org/web/20210319023509/https://blog.gitbook.com/tech/post-mortems/06-20-gitbook-domains-blocked-by-registrar https://web.archive.org/web/20210319023509/https://blog.gitb...
Jason_Protell 5y ago
Unpopular opinion: Google Domains is easy to use, has great customer support, and offers competitive prices. I've used Google Domains for years and I don't have any complaints.
- bxparks 5y ago
  I agree, very easy to use. Prices are pretty good, but not the cheapest. But the most important question is: What happens when they ban your account? You will lose your domains. Congrats to the Google engineers who made this happen. But I transferred my domains out a few months ago because I will never win against the Google AI.
  - Jason_Protell 5y ago
    "What happens when they ban your account?" Not when, but if. Either way, being banned by Google would be catastrophic.
    - mirekrusin 5y ago
      Less so if you don't also throw domains into that basket.
    - tjpnz 5y ago
      One of the domains I own I plan to keep indefinitely. Assuming Google survives that long I think it really does start to become a question of when.
- munk-a 5y ago
  Google delivers services that work wonderfully for 95% of customers until the day they arbitrarily decide to shutter the service with no warning. I use a whole bunch of google services these days but they're all the services that have clear exit strategies - unless Google pulls the plug without warning we've got migration strategies to get off them without too much damage.
  - 5y ago
jyu 5y ago
I was using a Google Cloud database last year on a production system. It shut off without any emails or notifications or messages or phone calls. I won't be fooled a second time.
anderspitman 5y ago
Domains are incredibly cheap for what you get, but they're harder to use than they need to be. Someone shouldn't have to understand DNS records, IP addresses, ports, NAT, TLS certs, VPSes, the command line, etc in order to securely connect their domain to an app like Plex/Jellyfin/Nextcloud running on their own hardware. You should be able to install a Nextcloud app on an old unused Android phone, go through a quick OAuth flow to connect it to a subdomain, plug the phone into power in a corner and be done with it. Cloudflare is currently the closest to this ideal with their domains + Cloudflare Tunnel, but cloudflared is still CLI-only and all their products are built for developers. Plus they'll never offer end-to-end encryption. I also maintain a list of more DIY tunneling services[0], but again CLI knowledge is currently a requirement. My main side project at the moment is seeing how far I can lower the barrier of entry. [0]: https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling
- 3np 5y ago
  > DNS records, IP addresses, ports, NAT, TLS certs These and then some are things you will not have to care about if you instead expose it as a Tor hidden service - worth considering for the self-hoster. May not be ideal for high-bitrate movie streaming but for many other use-cases like Nextcloud it's great and easy to set up.
  - anderspitman 5y ago
    Does it really work well for Nextcloud? Seems like Nextcloud would be both bandwidth and latency sensitive, both of which are problematic over Tor. Also, in order to use a hidden service the client device needs to be running Tor, right? Sorry I've never really used it myself.
hedgehog 5y ago
My recent experience with Domains was trying to delete a Google Workspace account that used to have an attached domain. It took several weeks of back and forth with their support due to problems on their end, with them asking me various things like to help them debug the admin console front end, to pay them to re-register the domain so they could cancel the account, etc, etc. Lots of pass the buck "oh that is a different department" but no follow-through on connecting me to the right one. It was bizarre.
lizardactivist 5y ago
Just more things to tie to Google and thus risk losing when Google flippantly locks or closes your account.
newhouseb 5y ago
PSA: If you use Google Domains to buy a domain for your company DO NOT USE IT TO ALSO BUY GOOGLE APPS (or whatever it's called this month). If you ever want to change your company's primary domain... you can't. We're stuck now with a legacy domain (configured with an alias so it's invisible to others) that we can't move off of without basically burning the whole thing down and starting fresh. It reeks of technical debt and poor engineering design that buying Google Apps through a reseller (where that reseller is _also_ Google) totally ties your hands for properly managing your deployment.
cryptozeus 5y ago
have bought few domains with them, seems pretty basic but works
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
albertopv 5y ago
Here only to read all (deserved) negative comments on Google products management. I wasn't expecting less.
aaronbrethorst 5y ago
Ooh! Another Google product I will never use because they’ll get bored of it in 2 years and leave me stranded!
baggy_trough 5y ago
Any domain consigned to the tender mercies of Google is as good as lost.
sharno 5y ago
I've started using Cloudflare's domains and getting away from Google. Their reputation of shutting down services and accounts is well established
mmcgaha 5y ago
Interesting when I clicked the link they offered a 20% discount. Two minutes later I get an email offering a 30% discount. I used Network Solutions before moving to Google Domains and I will take no customer support over bad customer support any day. With network solutions, domains were over priced. To get the real price, you had to call customer service and ask for a lower price.
cletus 5y ago
Until Google comes out and segregates actual and false positive ToS violations such that it doesn't kill your entire Google account, I can't in good conscience use any additional Google services. This began TEN YEARS AGO when Google+ "real name" violations disabled your entire Google account. Gmail, Google Photos, AdWords, everything. This is completely unacceptable and has never been addressed or rectified. If you use Gmail then your Google account is simply too large of a single point of failure to risk further exposure. What happens when a false positive disables my account? Can I still transfer my domains out? I'm not convinced that's true so thanks but no thanks.
account-5 5y ago
I feel sorry for anyone who actually use(s|d) this. Google have proven time and time again their services cannot be trusted. Why anyone would actually use this is beyond me. I'm sure there will be some play at vendor lock-in and definitely holding your data to ransome; but worse is the uncertainty this service will exist for any meaningful length of time. How long before you're mysteriously locked out with no way to log back in and no one to contact to sort it out?
rinze 5y ago
All other domain registrars out there have probably started thinking about their "transfer back your domains from Google Domains" for when whoever at Google loses interest in this and shuts down.
arunharidas 5y ago
no thanks! If you go against the popular narratives, you'll be banned from using your domains.
maartn 5y ago
Right around the moment Google Analytics is going to be prohibited in the EU...
- sdfhbdf 5y ago
  Could you elaborate?
noneeeed 5y ago
Given Google's habit of having some "AI" randomly kill someone's account, combined with a total lack of customer service, I can't think of a company I would trust less with my domains. It still makes me nervous that my email is hosted with them, but that's something I'll probably get sorted soon.
tommiegannert 5y ago
> Google Domains is available to anyone whose billing address is in one of our supported countries: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, Vietnam, South Africa, Switzerland, Philippines, Poland, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Sweden. We’re working hard to expand our availability. https://domains.google/support/ https://domains.google/support/
willmadden 5y ago
I’ll take “Things I’ll never use for $500, Alex.”
toothpicked 5y ago
Since gmail came out of beta, it is worst. I never had any issues with it when it was in beta.
pedalpete 5y ago
Aside from all the very good reasons people are giving for not using google, the question I'm asking is What is google doing in the domain space that is different from any other provider? What's their unique USP? Anyone technical can use another provider and connect to Google services if they'd like (or other service). Anyone non-technical that is using SquareSpace (Canva now has a website builder as well - but no domain sign-up yet), can get a domain through SquareSpace. So, the question is, who is this for?
- Crash0v3rid3 5y ago
  > So, the question is, who is this for? For people who want a domain, it's really that simple. Who cares if there are other providers in this space, consumers can pick and choose the service providers they prefer.
mushyhammer 5y ago
If I were you I would never do this, mostly because there’s already an insane amount of competition so it’s really, really not worth giving yet more power over your sanity to Google. Someone marks your business @domain emails as spam, now your account is locked. Why would you put yourself in this situation? Just, don’t.
Corrado 5y ago
I wanted a ".dev" domain for a project a few years ago. At the time, Google was the only one offering that TLD. However, it looks like you can get ".dev" domains anywhere. Was this change part of Google Domains leaving beta? Or is it completely unrelated?
gverrilla 5y ago
Never ever.
devoutsalsa 5y ago
Can you imagine losing your domain name because a Google bot locked your account? No thanks.
- buro9 5y ago
  Even beyond the risk to the account (a non-zero risk), Google has other issues. Only this week I've had an order for some hardware cancelled by them for "sales terms" with no way to identify what sales terms I was in breach of even though I could contact a support person and was spending hundreds of $$$. It's not a huge loss for me to not be able to purchase some Nest equipment as there are a lot of competitors I can purchase equivalents from, but the experience underlines that Google support is terrible - support people are hard to contact and have no agency/autonomy/authority to solve anything. The T&S risk is real enough that I wouldn't use Google Domains. But that they can't even support products that they 100% own and sell and which are very high margin (compared to domain names) really doesn't inspire confidence.
oxfordmale 5y ago
Is this yet another service to be added to Google's graveyard in a few years time? Domain registration is not Google's core business and I can't see it being massively profitable(double digits), so it will likely face the chop soon. I am sure they will offer a way to transfer your domains, however, why go through this pain when the outcome is inevitable. My rule of thumb is to only buy a service of a company if it is their core business and customer retention actually matters to them. If Google Domains gets shut down none of the share holders will suddenly panic, it probably won't even register. As a result customer retention and satisfaction will not be very high on the priority list.
- FerretFred 5y ago
  > Is this yet another service to be added to Google's graveyard in a few years time? came here to say this :/
ck2 5y ago
Looking how much of a mess they made ending the free Gsuite accounts with the multi-users, mail routing etc. you'd be a fool to trust Google products for any free feature. They even promised the free gsuite accounts would be free forever in writing and they aren't, so imagine relying on any feature of Google domains. I'm wondering how long until certain aspects of gmail aren't free anymore.
K5EiS 5y ago
How long until this service is shut down?
daveed 5y ago
It looks like a lot of people here are unhappy with this. I'll add a voice as someone who recently used Google Domains and had a pretty good experience.
windex 5y ago
Launch a service, gather data, shutdown the service. Nope. Not trying. I am now scared about the years of stuff I have on gmail.

143 points by Garbage 5y ago

andyfleming 5y ago

Semi-related: What alternative is your registrar of choice and why?

sneak 5y ago
Additionally: Are there any good registrars that support U2F/FIDO/WebAuthn (aka hardware tokens) for 2FA? Mine only does TOTP and I would like the security provided by hardware.
- mminer237 5y ago
  Namecheap does: https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/10102/45/how-can-i-use-the-u2f-method-for-twofactor-authentication/ https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx...
anderspitman 5y ago
https://TakingNames.io https://TakingNames.io obviously. Disclaimer: I run it.
- DomainEater247 5y ago
  I'm curious what goes into running one? Do you need to have stable NameServer's with static IPs that have 100% uptime? Why create one?
  - anderspitman 5y ago
    It's very easy to get started, and easy to progressively add services. The most important distinction is between a domain registrar and a domain reseller. As far as I know, most start out as resellers (Namecheap started as an Enom reseller. AWS still resells Gandi). Being a legit registrar is actually fairly expensive. Reselling complexity depends on the upstream registrar. Most of the big ones have reseller programs, including white label services. TakingNames.io uses Name.com, which doesn't require anything official. I just sell domains using Stripe for payments then use the Name.com API to buy the domain. Then I forward DNS changes using their API as well. Currently I default to using Name.com's nameservers, but users can set custom nameservers and I may run my own eventually.
imilk 5y ago
porkbun.com is great
mminer237 5y ago
I use Porkbun because they're typically the cheapest, tbh. They have a really nice interface too, but my registrar isn't something I interact with more than once a year typically. As long as they aren't shady like GoDaddy, it doesn't matter that much. There's tons of good options.
- alligatorplum 5y ago
  +1 to Porkbun. I think cloudlfare sells domains at-cost so if you want something cheaper than they might be worth looking into. But I have been a happy porkbun customer for a few years and they are my go to recommendation to anyone who asks.
- imilk 5y ago
  Also have quite a few great easter eggs on their site. Always nice when a company has a bit of personality.
PascLeRasc 5y ago
Porkbun has been good to me, but I can't get it to work for iCloud custom domains.

DoItToMe81 5y ago

With my experiences with Google in the past, I would never trust my domains with them. Not my personal ones, and especially not my business ones. I also don't trust their customer support.

snek_case 5y ago

Does that mean it's cancelled then? ;)

henriquez 5y ago
It means your domains have been canceled by an algorithm that determined your account is in violation of Google's terms of service. Hopefully you know a Google engineer or have experience starting Twitter mobs.
- dtparr 5y ago
  'Have experience starting Twitter mobs' is something I'm excited to start seeing on resumés soon. Followed by the discussion over whether that shows key leadership/organization abilities or not, a la the "Wow Raiding Guild Leader" debates of the late 2000's.
- sumedh 5y ago
  > Hopefully you know a Google engineer or have experience starting Twitter mobs. or you can start a Tell HN thread here and hope it blows up and then someone from Google can look at it.

JacobHenner 5y ago

Over/under for how long it'll be before it's shut down?

munk-a 5y ago
Considering it just left beta... I'd give it three weeks.

NKosmatos 5y ago

They’re also giving a 20% discount for getting domains from them. Keep in mind the Google domains is not available in all countries: https://support.google.com/domains/answer/4639612?hl=en https://support.google.com/domains/answer/4639612?hl=en

blindseer 5y ago

lol no thanks. Congrats to all the engineers that have worked on this and getting this out the door, but I don't think anyone should use or recommend these Google services, especially when they have been SO inconsistent about the life, longevity and future of their products. I'm curious to be proven otherwise (and open to criticism of my claims), especially when other services have existed for a while that provide the same functionality, or offer better tie in with alternative products (hosting, pages, workers, lambdas, compute etc).

vinceguidry 5y ago
Now that it's out of beta I should probably move my domain to somewhere more trustworthy.
- Tostino 5y ago
  Could be sunset any day now. It's "legacy".
- s0rce 5y ago
  Thats exactly what I did. Didn't feel like paying $6/mo for gmail. Moved to zoho.
  - vinceguidry 5y ago
    I'm on fastmail, happy to pay for reliable service.
  - a5aAqU 5y ago
    Another option is Gandi.net, which offers free email with domains.
mmastrac 5y ago
I got burned by the apps domain fiasco this year and it was the final nail in the coffin for me. I'm minimizing my reliance on Google now.

reset-password 5y ago

Judging by my own initial thoughts to this and the confirming commentary, I'd say that Google sure has built quite a reputation.

bushbaba 5y ago
To be fair they just raised GCP prices this week.
AceJohnny2 5y ago
That's the point of brands! I don't understand how they don't understand the damage they've done to themselves in certain circles. Clearly their brand is still valuable to a wider audience. I've long wondered why companies don't put their more experimental stuff under a different brand ("X by Google"-- no not that X), and promote them to full brand-name once they've gone reliable. Probably they want such experiments to get a boost from being associated with the better brand, and they figure the brand stain of stopping those experiments isn't so bad. But these things build up over time, and each individual product manager probably don't think they're the last straw... Another thought is that Google comes from an era of much more experimental web. Now the Internet is a much more established market, and platform stability is more a premium. Google is having trouble transitioning from their wilder younger days (of just a few years ago) to a more reliable company.
- chaostheory 5y ago
  > I've long wondered why companies don't put their more experimental stuff under a different brand ("X by Google"-- no not that X), and promote them to full brand-name once they've gone reliable. They still have most of the Alphabet to do this too. I'm still surprised they didn't already do it years ago.
oh_sigh 5y ago
Query your non-hn friends about Google. I swear there are people who just ctrl-f for Google on hn and post the same "when's it going to be cancelled?" I would wager that almost all of these posters just happen to have philosophical/political problems with Google too.

Doches 5y ago

But...why? I mean, I get it -- domain registrars aren't exactly at the top of my list for easy-to-use, reliable, trustworthy partners that I want to build a core part of my business or identity on top of. But I'm damned sure that Google isn't either, after 15+ years of launching or acquiring fantastic tools and swiftly burying them in the Google Graveyard [1]. Say what you want about Namecheap or GoDaddy; at least being a registrar is core to their business and not just a lark. [1] - https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/

Spivak 5y ago
Not Route53? I've pretty much just bought my domains and completely forgotten they existed for years secure that they'll just autorenew.
mminer237 5y ago
Namecheap and Porkbun are actually very easy-to-use, reliable, and trustworthy. I don't think Google is trying to actually be better than other solutions. They're not competitive on price or support. I think their whole plan is to capture people using GCP since they're already there anyway, a la Route53 or GoDaddy. Why add complexity to your system with multiple providers to save a few bucks a year or help with theoretical issues?
- sodality2 5y ago
  Porkbun is amazing. I had a problem with my FIDO2 key (there was no password reset path for you if you still had your FIDO2 key), so I let support know. Less than a day later their engineers got back to me letting me know they had added the feature and deployed it. Everyone there is super nice as well :)
- mardifoufs 5y ago
  Namecheap recently suspended an account because of a tweet thread speculating that a domain was maybe related to abusive behavior. Turns out it wasn't at all. It was so arbitrary even the people who were speculating were surprised by that decision. Even Google isn't sk arbitrary as to base their ban decisions on random Twitter discussion https://twitter.com/Namecheap/status/1489485337885921284 https://twitter.com/Namecheap/status/1489485337885921284

MikeDelta 5y ago

What if Google suddenly blocks your domains because the algo said so, and no way to talk to a human? I am having difficulties putting trust back into this relationship.

wohfab 5y ago
Do you know GoDaddy?
- munk-a 5y ago
  Yea - they're an absolutely terrible service that has lost a lot of ground to more relevant comparisons in recent years. Personally I've had no issue with webnames.ca but I assume that's just a Canada thing.
- ______-_-______ 5y ago
  This is being downvoted but I think it's an interesting question. If your life was on the line and you had to choose—would you do business with Google, or GoDaddy?
  - ProAm 5y ago
    I would choose not to play.

pasiaj 5y ago

I started using Google Apps for Domains pretty much the day it came out. 3 of my companies are using Gsuite right now. But all my domains tied to a Google Account that could get cancelled with no recourse? No, I think I'll pass.

ProAm 5y ago

I would never trust google with a product that isn't ads for long term use.

a5aAqU 5y ago

Google's "customer support" is so bad, I think it would be a huge mistake to let them control your domains. Dealing with Google's "support" has been a nightmare over and over on many unrelated issues. They also abandon many projects or hold you hostage in extremely inconvenient ways.[1] [1] https://www.androidauthority.com/gsuite-legacy-free-edition-3093722/ https://www.androidauthority.com/gsuite-legacy-free-edition-...

chaostheory 5y ago
People have been complaining about this for years. Besides Google Cloud, have they addressed this or do they keep ignoring it? Does anyone know if Google Cloud has customer service that's equivalent to AWS?
- sofixa 5y ago
  They have addressed it with Google One. GCP does have support, but the things I've heard about it from are meh ( still better than Azure or OVH though).
- a5aAqU 5y ago
  It isn't just Google Cloud. I've had absolutely terrible experiences with several Google support departments. It's often impossible or difficult to resolve the problems. A domain isn't the kind of thing that you can quickly move somewhere else when things go wrong.
  - mission_failed 5y ago
    Especially when the domain is locked and you cannot get access to your account
lern_too_spel 5y ago
I could be convinced to put up with the lack of customer support if the price is right, but the price is higher than competitors. I'll stick with Cloudflare Registrar.
5y ago

MrWiffles 5y ago

How long until Google kills this one? TAKING ALL BETS!

mkl95 5y ago

What do they offer vs some powerful competitor like Namecheap?

ugjka 5y ago
24/7 surveillance by AI algorithms for any infringement of TOS

rectang 5y ago

Tying your domain to a Google account — or any centralized megaprovider account — seems fraught with risk. What happens when Google bans your account for some misstep, or even a mistake on Google's part, in some other service? Does the domain just expire because you can't access your account? At least if you separate your email provider and your domain, if the email provider decides to ban you you can move the domain to a different email provider and maintain continuity. But if the domain registrar bans you, what then? It seems as though the wisest move is to keep your domains hitched to the most minimal account you can — avoiding centralized service providers such as Google, Amazon, etc.

paxys 5y ago
I use Google Domains with an isolated single-purpose Google account. Emails from it are forwarded to my main account. It is easily the best domain registrar out there IMO.
- remram 5y ago
  A few weeks back I couldn't add/edit/remove domain names that start with a _ and contained an accent. That's when I found out how good their support really is, even for a bug on their side. Probably best to use a service from a company primarily in the business of offering paid services.
- cute_boi 5y ago
  Have you tried cloudflare? They take 0% profit, and should be better than Google.
- rectang 5y ago
  I'm skeptical that accounts with megaproviders can effectively be isolated. If one account gets banned, and Google determines that another account is owned by the same person, they may well ban the other account too. The solution is to register your domain (at least) with a provider that doesn't have so much insight into their users. Again, this applies not only to Google, but also to Amazon and others. It's really a problem with centralized reputation.
- 5y ago

pyrale 5y ago

I clicked on the link half-expecting that "out of beta" was the jargon to say that Google closed another product.

monktastic1 5y ago
Out of the Google beta frying pan and into the Google dumpster fire.
- adamors 5y ago
  This whole thread has tickled my funny bone in ways I didn’t expect.

blakesterz 5y ago

"We launched Google Domains in 2015 to be the easiest place to find, buy, and manage a domain." I'm sure we're all painfully aware of the longevity of many Google services that are considered "in production", there's a long list of things shut down. BUT is it common for something to be in BETA for 7 years? That seems like a REALLY long time for something to be beta anywhere. Is that common at Google?

zerocrates 5y ago
Gmail was famously "beta" for a very long time but I don't know how long exactly. A quick search seems to say 5 years?
andrewguenther 5y ago
Pretty common for Google. Gmail was in beta for five years, Google Docs and Calendar I believe were also in beta for similar lengths of time.

joeconway 5y ago

If you’re buying a domain, you should consider http://gandi.net/ http://gandi.net/ No affiliation, I just love it and see people in this thread rightly lamenting godaddy, and surprisingly no mention of this gem of a company

a5aAqU 5y ago
Another vote for Gandi. Each domain also comes with 2 email accounts and extra forwarders.
anderspitman 5y ago
Fun fact: Gandi is what AWS uses under the hood when you buy a domain from them.
vincentmarle 5y ago
Gandi still offers services in Russia and Belarus [1] while Namecheap discontinued its services to them [2]. No affiliation with Namecheap, just a happy customer of a company that is not supporting a dictatorial regime. [1] https://news.gandi.net/en/2022/03/for-all-the-people-and-one-internet-against-escalation-and-war/ https://news.gandi.net/en/2022/03/for-all-the-people-and-one... [2] https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/1/22956581/russia-ukraine-namecheap-ends-service-war-crimes https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/1/22956581/russia-ukraine-na...
- sodality2 5y ago
  Providing services to Russians =/= supporting a dictatorial regime. That's very reductionist in my view. Many Russians simply cannot up and leave their country at once, or worse, maybe they are running a website that broadcasts against the Russian government, and Namecheap was one of their only options. I don't think it's as clear cut as "provide them service" but it's more nuanced than that/
- bartvk 5y ago
  > Gandi still offers services in Russia What does that tell you?

acdha 5y ago

In an amusing bit of naming similarity, discontinuing “Google Apps for Domains” is why I migrated my last service _off_ of Google. Not going back.

wohfab 5y ago

Oh man, this comments... The number of products, Google actually "killed" and not just rename, merge into another product, or develop further under a new name, is quite low. And frankly, most people, complaining about product lifetime, probably never even used any of those products at all. Yes, killedbygoogle.com is fun, but come on...

munk-a 5y ago
Hey - I'm still personally sore over iGoogle. They killed off an absolutely trivial to use RSS reader - I made heavy use of iGoogle while it still existed... and they killed it off to try and save Google+ which they then proceeded to also abandon. I've definitely felt the burn of Google just randomly killing off a useful thing for some opaque marketing decision that turned out to be extremely ill-advised.
sigmonsays 5y ago
but it's true...
MikeDelta 5y ago
I'm not worried about them killing the service, I am worried about them blocking the domains of my business, for some vague reason, and me having no ability to talk to anyone to have it solved. I am sure it doesn't happen often, but if it does it sure is not going to be to me.
- wohfab 5y ago
  But that can happen with every domain registrar, can't it?
rurp 5y ago
So you're saying all I have to worry about is my account being nuked by an opaque algorithm or the price suddenly being jacked up 20x, like say the Maps API?! Great, sign me up!
rendall 5y ago
> The number of products, Google actually "killed"... is quite low. That is an extraordinary claim, but I'm listening. https://killedbygoogle.com https://killedbygoogle.com has 264 listings. Are you saying that if we excluded those that were actually renamed or folded into other products, that it would reduce 264 products to some number that is "quite low"?

hashamali 5y ago

I've found Google domains to be considerably more expensive than Namecheap. Anyone have a good reason to use it over other registrars?

bradfa 5y ago
I used to be a Namecheap customer, I have been using Google Domains for a few years now. Namecheap isn't that much cheaper, maybe a dollar or two per year in my quick look just now. I've found Google Domains really easy to use for my personal domains, including for dynamic DNS. So far it's just worked and I've been happy with it. Not to say that Namecheap was hard to use, just that Google is pretty easy and the cost difference isn't enough to make me want to consider switching back to Namecheap. I do not recall why I stopped using Namecheap, it was a while ago.

midnitewarrior 5y ago

Google has a product out of beta? Time to shut it down.

jghn 5y ago

As someone leery of tying my domain to my Google account, I'm curious what people recommend for this use case. I have a vanity domain currently hosted on a web hosting platform. These days it only gets used to forward the email of a few people to their contemporary email accounts, all gmail based. As I no longer use the web hosting, storage, or anything else like that I'd love to find something cheaper that can just handle the email forwarding. I like the idea of using Google as for many things I trust them more than a smaller company. But there are too many stories out there of people having no idea what they did wrong and losing all access to their account, with no recourse.

bxparks 5y ago
Cloudflare Domain Registrar. They sell at-cost, so $9.95/year for a .com/.net domain. But don't use your gmail account as the admin account. For email forwarding, Cloudflare Email Routing looks promising. I'm just about to give it a try. It's currently in beta though.
- dazc 5y ago
  Agree, cloudflare is ideal for parent's use case although you have to join a waiting list of several weeks for forwarding to be activated (my experience anyways).
  - et-al 5y ago
    From my recent personal experience, Cloudflare email forwarding is available without a waiting list now. Another poster a month ago said it took a week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30129770 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30129770
- srhngpr 5y ago
  Happy customer of Cloudflare Email Routing - it works exceptionally well. I've paired it with Amazon SES for the occasional time I need to send emails from custom domain.

sneak 5y ago

Now seems like a good time to point out that Google is fully aware of the linkages between all of your various Google accounts (work, personal 1, personal 2, side project, other domain, etc). Both mobile platforms allow multiple Google account login and if you use one account for work slack and one account for personal gmail then thanks to your phone OS's giant gaping per-app sandbox hole, big daddy G can see all of your credentials are being used on the same device and connect them together as a single user. This means that any itty bitty TOS violation on one account means you potentially lose all your accounts. Accidentally contradict the WHO (who, for example, said not to wear masks) in a YouTube comment and get your personal video watching account TOSed for posting fake news? Accidentally mention an ITAR/SDN country by name in a comment field in a Google Wallet/Pay transaction? Send a zipped malware sample to a colleague for analysis from your gmail? Say goodbye to your Play Store apps published under your work account, AND your domain names registered under your side project account, AND your Google Voice number, AND all your cloud instances on your GCE account, AND all your YouTube uploads on the video account, AND all your files in Google Drive, et c. You also lose ability to reset all of your accounts that have your @gmail.com address as the login name, and you lose the ability to even log into any accounts for which you may have used that "Login with Google" button. Google is not trustworthy. Don't give them your money or data. Register a domain with someone who isn't Google, and point it somewhere that isn't Gmail. There are step-by-step instructions on how to do this on my website.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

aluminussoma 5y ago

Since complaining on Hacker News is the only way to effectively reach Google employees, I'll say that as a customer I am confused at the offerings of Google Domains and GCP Cloud Domains (via Cloud DNS). I recently registered a domain via Cloud Domains and it shows up under Google Domains.

qmarchi 5y ago
They're backed by the same registrar, so it makes sense. Disc. Googler, not in Domains.
sofixa 5y ago
> Since complaining on Hacker News is the only way to effectively reach Google employees, That's an exaggeration. You can find a bunch of them on Twitter or LinkedIn. Joking aside, B2B services have support, and consumers can pay for it via Google One.

Jabbles 5y ago

Hopefully incidents like [1] will never happen outside of the beta. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23417046 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23417046

Folcon 5y ago
Seeing as they took down the blog post, link: https://web.archive.org/web/20210319023509/https://blog.gitbook.com/tech/post-mortems/06-20-gitbook-domains-blocked-by-registrar https://web.archive.org/web/20210319023509/https://blog.gitb...

Jason_Protell 5y ago

Unpopular opinion: Google Domains is easy to use, has great customer support, and offers competitive prices. I've used Google Domains for years and I don't have any complaints.

bxparks 5y ago
I agree, very easy to use. Prices are pretty good, but not the cheapest. But the most important question is: What happens when they ban your account? You will lose your domains. Congrats to the Google engineers who made this happen. But I transferred my domains out a few months ago because I will never win against the Google AI.
- Jason_Protell 5y ago
  "What happens when they ban your account?" Not when, but if. Either way, being banned by Google would be catastrophic.
  - mirekrusin 5y ago
    Less so if you don't also throw domains into that basket.
  - tjpnz 5y ago
    One of the domains I own I plan to keep indefinitely. Assuming Google survives that long I think it really does start to become a question of when.
munk-a 5y ago
Google delivers services that work wonderfully for 95% of customers until the day they arbitrarily decide to shutter the service with no warning. I use a whole bunch of google services these days but they're all the services that have clear exit strategies - unless Google pulls the plug without warning we've got migration strategies to get off them without too much damage.
- 5y ago

jyu 5y ago

I was using a Google Cloud database last year on a production system. It shut off without any emails or notifications or messages or phone calls. I won't be fooled a second time.

anderspitman 5y ago

Domains are incredibly cheap for what you get, but they're harder to use than they need to be. Someone shouldn't have to understand DNS records, IP addresses, ports, NAT, TLS certs, VPSes, the command line, etc in order to securely connect their domain to an app like Plex/Jellyfin/Nextcloud running on their own hardware. You should be able to install a Nextcloud app on an old unused Android phone, go through a quick OAuth flow to connect it to a subdomain, plug the phone into power in a corner and be done with it. Cloudflare is currently the closest to this ideal with their domains + Cloudflare Tunnel, but cloudflared is still CLI-only and all their products are built for developers. Plus they'll never offer end-to-end encryption. I also maintain a list of more DIY tunneling services[0], but again CLI knowledge is currently a requirement. My main side project at the moment is seeing how far I can lower the barrier of entry. [0]: https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling

3np 5y ago
> DNS records, IP addresses, ports, NAT, TLS certs These and then some are things you will not have to care about if you instead expose it as a Tor hidden service - worth considering for the self-hoster. May not be ideal for high-bitrate movie streaming but for many other use-cases like Nextcloud it's great and easy to set up.
- anderspitman 5y ago
  Does it really work well for Nextcloud? Seems like Nextcloud would be both bandwidth and latency sensitive, both of which are problematic over Tor. Also, in order to use a hidden service the client device needs to be running Tor, right? Sorry I've never really used it myself.

hedgehog 5y ago

My recent experience with Domains was trying to delete a Google Workspace account that used to have an attached domain. It took several weeks of back and forth with their support due to problems on their end, with them asking me various things like to help them debug the admin console front end, to pay them to re-register the domain so they could cancel the account, etc, etc. Lots of pass the buck "oh that is a different department" but no follow-through on connecting me to the right one. It was bizarre.

lizardactivist 5y ago

Just more things to tie to Google and thus risk losing when Google flippantly locks or closes your account.

newhouseb 5y ago

PSA: If you use Google Domains to buy a domain for your company DO NOT USE IT TO ALSO BUY GOOGLE APPS (or whatever it's called this month). If you ever want to change your company's primary domain... you can't. We're stuck now with a legacy domain (configured with an alias so it's invisible to others) that we can't move off of without basically burning the whole thing down and starting fresh. It reeks of technical debt and poor engineering design that buying Google Apps through a reseller (where that reseller is _also_ Google) totally ties your hands for properly managing your deployment.

cryptozeus 5y ago

have bought few domains with them, seems pretty basic but works

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

albertopv 5y ago

Here only to read all (deserved) negative comments on Google products management. I wasn't expecting less.

aaronbrethorst 5y ago

Ooh! Another Google product I will never use because they’ll get bored of it in 2 years and leave me stranded!

baggy_trough 5y ago

Any domain consigned to the tender mercies of Google is as good as lost.

sharno 5y ago

I've started using Cloudflare's domains and getting away from Google. Their reputation of shutting down services and accounts is well established

mmcgaha 5y ago

Interesting when I clicked the link they offered a 20% discount. Two minutes later I get an email offering a 30% discount. I used Network Solutions before moving to Google Domains and I will take no customer support over bad customer support any day. With network solutions, domains were over priced. To get the real price, you had to call customer service and ask for a lower price.

cletus 5y ago

Until Google comes out and segregates actual and false positive ToS violations such that it doesn't kill your entire Google account, I can't in good conscience use any additional Google services. This began TEN YEARS AGO when Google+ "real name" violations disabled your entire Google account. Gmail, Google Photos, AdWords, everything. This is completely unacceptable and has never been addressed or rectified. If you use Gmail then your Google account is simply too large of a single point of failure to risk further exposure. What happens when a false positive disables my account? Can I still transfer my domains out? I'm not convinced that's true so thanks but no thanks.

account-5 5y ago

I feel sorry for anyone who actually use(s|d) this. Google have proven time and time again their services cannot be trusted. Why anyone would actually use this is beyond me. I'm sure there will be some play at vendor lock-in and definitely holding your data to ransome; but worse is the uncertainty this service will exist for any meaningful length of time. How long before you're mysteriously locked out with no way to log back in and no one to contact to sort it out?

rinze 5y ago

All other domain registrars out there have probably started thinking about their "transfer back your domains from Google Domains" for when whoever at Google loses interest in this and shuts down.

arunharidas 5y ago

no thanks! If you go against the popular narratives, you'll be banned from using your domains.

maartn 5y ago

Right around the moment Google Analytics is going to be prohibited in the EU...

sdfhbdf 5y ago
Could you elaborate?

noneeeed 5y ago

Given Google's habit of having some "AI" randomly kill someone's account, combined with a total lack of customer service, I can't think of a company I would trust less with my domains. It still makes me nervous that my email is hosted with them, but that's something I'll probably get sorted soon.

tommiegannert 5y ago

> Google Domains is available to anyone whose billing address is in one of our supported countries: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, Vietnam, South Africa, Switzerland, Philippines, Poland, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Sweden. We’re working hard to expand our availability. https://domains.google/support/ https://domains.google/support/

willmadden 5y ago

I’ll take “Things I’ll never use for $500, Alex.”

toothpicked 5y ago

Since gmail came out of beta, it is worst. I never had any issues with it when it was in beta.

pedalpete 5y ago

Aside from all the very good reasons people are giving for not using google, the question I'm asking is What is google doing in the domain space that is different from any other provider? What's their unique USP? Anyone technical can use another provider and connect to Google services if they'd like (or other service). Anyone non-technical that is using SquareSpace (Canva now has a website builder as well - but no domain sign-up yet), can get a domain through SquareSpace. So, the question is, who is this for?

Crash0v3rid3 5y ago
> So, the question is, who is this for? For people who want a domain, it's really that simple. Who cares if there are other providers in this space, consumers can pick and choose the service providers they prefer.

mushyhammer 5y ago

If I were you I would never do this, mostly because there’s already an insane amount of competition so it’s really, really not worth giving yet more power over your sanity to Google. Someone marks your business @domain emails as spam, now your account is locked. Why would you put yourself in this situation? Just, don’t.

Corrado 5y ago

I wanted a ".dev" domain for a project a few years ago. At the time, Google was the only one offering that TLD. However, it looks like you can get ".dev" domains anywhere. Was this change part of Google Domains leaving beta? Or is it completely unrelated?

gverrilla 5y ago

Never ever.

devoutsalsa 5y ago

Can you imagine losing your domain name because a Google bot locked your account? No thanks.

buro9 5y ago
Even beyond the risk to the account (a non-zero risk), Google has other issues. Only this week I've had an order for some hardware cancelled by them for "sales terms" with no way to identify what sales terms I was in breach of even though I could contact a support person and was spending hundreds of $$$. It's not a huge loss for me to not be able to purchase some Nest equipment as there are a lot of competitors I can purchase equivalents from, but the experience underlines that Google support is terrible - support people are hard to contact and have no agency/autonomy/authority to solve anything. The T&S risk is real enough that I wouldn't use Google Domains. But that they can't even support products that they 100% own and sell and which are very high margin (compared to domain names) really doesn't inspire confidence.

oxfordmale 5y ago

Is this yet another service to be added to Google's graveyard in a few years time? Domain registration is not Google's core business and I can't see it being massively profitable(double digits), so it will likely face the chop soon. I am sure they will offer a way to transfer your domains, however, why go through this pain when the outcome is inevitable. My rule of thumb is to only buy a service of a company if it is their core business and customer retention actually matters to them. If Google Domains gets shut down none of the share holders will suddenly panic, it probably won't even register. As a result customer retention and satisfaction will not be very high on the priority list.

FerretFred 5y ago
> Is this yet another service to be added to Google's graveyard in a few years time? came here to say this :/

ck2 5y ago

Looking how much of a mess they made ending the free Gsuite accounts with the multi-users, mail routing etc. you'd be a fool to trust Google products for any free feature. They even promised the free gsuite accounts would be free forever in writing and they aren't, so imagine relying on any feature of Google domains. I'm wondering how long until certain aspects of gmail aren't free anymore.

K5EiS 5y ago

How long until this service is shut down?

daveed 5y ago

It looks like a lot of people here are unhappy with this. I'll add a voice as someone who recently used Google Domains and had a pretty good experience.

windex 5y ago

Launch a service, gather data, shutdown the service. Nope. Not trying. I am now scared about the years of stuff I have on gmail.