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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 hav

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.
- Jason_Protell 5y ago
  I know that Google is notorious for shuttering services, but I can't imagine they would shutdown Google Domains without giving customers an opportunity to transfer domain ownership to another registrar.
  - munk-a 5y ago
    What is ample time for a company that hired a webdev one time to build them a static website and never checks webmaster@domain emails? What is ample time when you've got ops scripts set up to automatically do domain stuff but don't employ that person anymore? What is a reasonable money expenditure to migrate off a platform when you could look at the company record and see that you're much better off just choosing a different platform? Is a week or a month of dev hours worth putting your faith in a company notorious for randomly shuttering products? I feel like Google marketing has no idea the absolute monster of a problem they've created by allowing their business to get a reputation for being extremely unreliable in the B2B space.
    - throwaway_se099 5y ago
      Yes they have a reputation for merciless shuttering of services, but come on. What is ample time for a company that hired a webdev one time to build them a static website and never checks webmaster@domain emails? That kind of outfit is much more likely to be a victim of missed renewal or a myriad other technical screwups than a Google-initiated exit of the registrar business. I feel like Google marketing has no idea the absolute monster of a problem they've created by allowing their business to get a reputation for being extremely unreliable in the B2B space. They can certainly count on a spate of hyperventilating HN posts whenever they announce any kind of service-related news. More seriously, their most celebrated servicides are consumer-oriented, like Google Reader. "Extremely unreliable in the B2B space" sounds like an exaggeration to me.
      - munk-a 5y ago
        I mean my company, which isn't small, jumped ship from G-suite based SSO for Okta a few years back out of business concern - so while single anecdotes don't make for proofs it's definitely not non-existent. I'd also suggest just bringing your tone down, this isn't a fight and calling people on the other side of the argument "hyperventilating" doesn't really do anything to promote meaningful discussion.

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.

Jason_Protell 5y ago
I know that Google is notorious for shuttering services, but I can't imagine they would shutdown Google Domains without giving customers an opportunity to transfer domain ownership to another registrar.
- munk-a 5y ago
  What is ample time for a company that hired a webdev one time to build them a static website and never checks webmaster@domain emails? What is ample time when you've got ops scripts set up to automatically do domain stuff but don't employ that person anymore? What is a reasonable money expenditure to migrate off a platform when you could look at the company record and see that you're much better off just choosing a different platform? Is a week or a month of dev hours worth putting your faith in a company notorious for randomly shuttering products? I feel like Google marketing has no idea the absolute monster of a problem they've created by allowing their business to get a reputation for being extremely unreliable in the B2B space.
  - throwaway_se099 5y ago
    Yes they have a reputation for merciless shuttering of services, but come on. What is ample time for a company that hired a webdev one time to build them a static website and never checks webmaster@domain emails? That kind of outfit is much more likely to be a victim of missed renewal or a myriad other technical screwups than a Google-initiated exit of the registrar business. I feel like Google marketing has no idea the absolute monster of a problem they've created by allowing their business to get a reputation for being extremely unreliable in the B2B space. They can certainly count on a spate of hyperventilating HN posts whenever they announce any kind of service-related news. More seriously, their most celebrated servicides are consumer-oriented, like Google Reader. "Extremely unreliable in the B2B space" sounds like an exaggeration to me.
    - munk-a 5y ago
      I mean my company, which isn't small, jumped ship from G-suite based SSO for Okta a few years back out of business concern - so while single anecdotes don't make for proofs it's definitely not non-existent. I'd also suggest just bringing your tone down, this isn't a fight and calling people on the other side of the argument "hyperventilating" doesn't really do anything to promote meaningful discussion.