If you send me the domain name in question privately (use my HN username here @gmail.com), I can dig into it further. I suspect it's either an issue with the d

If you send me the domain name in question privately (use my HN username here @gmail.com), I can dig into it further. I suspect it's either an issue with the domain name registrar, in which case you should try out some others, or it's a case where the name is reserved and is not available for registration by anyone. If it is reserved I can find that out very easily. Note that it would not have been reserved as a result of a domain name search; it would have been reserved years ago, and perhaps the registrar you attempted to use didn't handle it well. EDIT: The user reached out to me privately and the domain name in question is indeed reserved (because it is a Google trademark), and has never been available for registration. Looks like the registrar did not correctly display it as unavailable for registration.