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Google no longer offers new domain registrations
- totetsu 3y agoThat was quicker than expected.
- colinbartlett 3y agoRelated discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36352347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36352347
- skilled 3y agoGoogle Domains assets (existing domains) was sold to Squarespace which has been discussed on HN at the time of the announcement, Alphabet selling Google Domains assets to Squarespace (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36346454 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36346454) (548 points | 86 days ago | 606 comments) Also relevant, About the Squarespace purchase of Google Domains registrations (https://support.google.com/domains/answer/13689670?hl=en https://support.google.com/domains/answer/13689670?hl=en)
- PartiallyTyped 3y agoI looked up some domains I was interested in the `.dev` TLD and they go for 7-8 times the price that google offered them for a year.
- makestuff 3y agoYeah I have a .RSVP domain for an event website. Google charged $12/yr and Squarespace charges $20. It was a TLD created by Google so there aren’t too many places that support it yet.
- drexlspivey 3y agocloudflare added the .dev TLD among others a few weeks ago
- juvenn 3y agoYes, and its cheaper even than google's price. I've just transferred to cloudflare a weeks ago.
- dang 3y agoThanks! Macroexpanded: Google Deprecates Google Domains, Sells It to Squarespace - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37140806 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37140806 - Aug 2023 (47 comments) Ask HN: Who should I use for Domain Names since Google Domains has been sold? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36868082 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36868082 - July 2023 (11 comments) Google Domains to Shut Down - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36437962 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36437962 - June 2023 (12 comments) Google is selling all my personal information in Google Domains to Squarespace? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36423465 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36423465 - June 2023 (124 comments) Google Cloud Domains is to be fully deprecated as part of Google Domains sale - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36369701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36369701 - June 2023 (45 comments) Ask HN: Where are you moving your Google domains to? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36364519 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36364519 - June 2023 (16 comments) Ask HN: Why would Google sell Google domains to Squarespace? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36352347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36352347 - June 2023 (72 comments) Alphabet selling Google Domains assets to Squarespace - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36346454 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36346454 - June 2023 (606 comments)
- hartator 3y agoI remember not so long ago Google Domains was considered a safe long-term way to register domains.
- ipnon 3y agoIsn’t the joke on HN generally that no product lasts at Google unless it’s search?
- lopatin 3y agoI just transferred mine over to AWS. For some reason I never knew they even did domains, and always bothered with Namecheap and Google.
- bandergirl 3y agoAWS has a few issues: - domains are relatively expensive ($13 vs $9.15 on CloudFlare for a .com, others even more expensive) - you have to pay DNS on top of that - you have to deal with AWS
- pnpnp 3y ago> - you have to pay DNS on top of that I’m starting to see this as a feature. AWS makes you pay per-request for a lot of things, but in my mind it makes those services sustainable. Maybe I’ve just been bitten by the promise of “free” or really cheap services either imploding or suddenly changing their billing model over the years.
- Sytten 3y agoGoogle Cloud Domain seems unaffected? Unsure it that is expected to change, never know with google these days.
- alphalima 3y agoUnfortunately cloud domains domains are going to managed by Squarespace. > Since Google Domains is the underlying domains registrar for Cloud Domains, there are some important changes that we want to share with you. > What do you need to know? Upon closing of the Squarespace-Google Domains transaction, Squarespace Domains will become the registrar for your domains managed by Cloud Domains.
- lima 3y agoThat's fine, though. AWS Route53 uses a number of third-party registrars like Gandi.
- oldtownroad 3y agoGoogle Cloud Domains as a product will continue to function but it’ll be an interface to Squarespace: Squarespace will be the registrar. “Yes, you can continue to search and register for new domains using Cloud Domains. After migration, Google Cloud becomes a reseller of Squarespace Domains. When you buy new domains using Cloud Domains after migration, the registrar of record is Squarespace.” The least bad outcome. https://cloud.google.com/domains/docs/faq https://cloud.google.com/domains/docs/faq
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- schemescape 3y agoThat was quick. I just had a renewal coming up, so I took the opportunity to transfer out. Originally, I was going to try Cloudflare, due to their at-cost pricing, but they didn’t allow transferring domains without first moving DNS (and maybe more? I couldn’t tell) to Cloudflare. I didn’t really understand the implications (would I have to use their CDN?), so I bailed out part way through. Edit: sounds like it’s just DNS: https://developers.cloudflare.com/registrar/faq/ https://developers.cloudflare.com/registrar/faq/ I ended up going with Porkbun, based on recommendations here. Their interface is a blast from the past, but their documentation is pretty good. The only issue I encountered is that they don’t support wildcard email forwarding like Google Domains, so I had to inventory the email addresses I’d been using and setup manual forwards for each. Overall, I wish Google Domains was still a thing. It was easy to use and cheap, and I thought it would stand the test of time. Edit to add: Google Domains’s UI/instructions for transferring out were great. What a shame the service is going away!
- _joel 3y agoJust keep the NS set to the original DNS? I've done that with cloudflare before and not needed to transfer in the whole DNS.
- schemescape 3y agoThe Cloudflare FAQ says you have to set the authoritative name servers to Cloudflare’s: https://developers.cloudflare.com/registrar/faq/#what-happens-to-my-nameservers-when-i-transfer-my-domain-to-cloudflare https://developers.cloudflare.com/registrar/faq/#what-happen... If that’s not the case, then I’m definitely misunderstanding something about DNS!
- bandergirl 3y agoThat's correct, you cannot change the name servers of a domain purchased on Cloudflare, but you don't have to use their proxy. I have yet to see a DNS zone manager as good as CloudFlare, so I've been using it anyway for the past 10 years for all of my domains.
- tikkun 3y agoThere was a thread about alternatives on HN [1]. The top mentioned ones were: Porkbun, Namecheap, Dynadot, Cloudflare, Nearlyfreespeech, Gandi. I've used Porkbun, Namecheap, and Gandi. Namecheap is my preferred. Porkbun is fine, Gandi I would prefer to not use again. I haven't tried Dynadot or Cloudflare's domains (but I love Cloudflare's DNS). [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37099102 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37099102
- rendall 3y agoWould you mind saying more about your experience with Gandi?
- pdw 3y agoGandi was sold earlier this year. The new owners do not have a good reputation.
- rapind 3y agoWasn’t Gandi’s whole schtick an ethical thing? Then they sold out?
- TedDoesntTalk 3y agoGandi’s VPS offerings have always been a nightmare
- mypetocean 3y agoNot saying this is what happened necessarily, but sometimes as a startup, you find yourself in a position where you must either sell to someone/anyone or the business must shut down (and you're left with the debt and with long-loyal early employees/friends whose equity you were never able to pay off). I was a founding member of a social enterprise startup which ended up in a position very similar to that. In our case, we were lucky that we had two options to sell: (A) to an investor who wanted to pervert our mission, vision, and values for profit; or, (B) to a nonprofit who didn't have the money to give us more than a single paycheck or two worth of payoff for our equity. If we had sold to Option A, a dozen of us would be wealthy right now. But the company we built would have been perverted into something unrecognizable. In our case, to our founder's credit, we sold to Option B to keep the dream alive, but none of us became wealthy... and the nonprofit just shut down the company we founded only 2 years after the purchase (partly because the nonprofit didn't have the business savvy to make it sustainable). _Everyone_ was just laid off. That means, our noble sacrifice only extended the lifetime of our noble vision by 2 years, and we're certainly feeling less good about it. Because the alternative would have meant that a bunch of us bleeding hearts would have the economic freedom right now to do all sorts of good for untold decades to come. So I'm just saying, sometimes you don't get to have good options and everything sucks, no matter how well-intentioned you are.
- pluc 3y agoSeriously does anyone trust Google to run a product? Even if they came out tomorrow with a teleportation service I'd be too worried they'd cancel it mid-flight to try it out.
- paulgb 3y agoUntil Domains, I mostly trusted google to keep running a paid b2b product with lots of users. Most of the famous products they've killed have been ones that either didn't bring in revenue, or never became popular. After the Domains announcement, I can't in good conscience bring myself to spin up any new GCP services, and have started leaning more heavily on AWS. Part of me thinks that Domains is a signal that Google is planning a larger exit from the cloud business, given the GCP / Domains integration, and the absolutely atrocious comms from Google around Domains has not reassured me at all.
- TedDoesntTalk 3y ago> that either didn't bring in revenue Domain registration is famously difficult to profit from unless the registrar is able to upsell
- paulgb 3y agoThey used it to upsell Google Workspace, as well as their own TLDs (.dev, .app). And although they didn't upsell GCP through it, the integration between the two was a nice (small) incentive to use GCP.
- andrewpolidori 3y agoWhat makes it so difficult to profit from? A yearly subscription to maintain some text entries doesn't seem that crazy to me.
- loopdoend 3y agoThe costs are known, the competition is high, the margins are low. You still have to deal with support/abuse. There is no real “high volume customer”.
- JOnAgain 3y agoAnother one bites the dust Another one bites the dust And another one gone, and another one gone Another one bites the dust (yeah) Hey, I'm gonna get you too Another one bites the dust
- tjpnz 3y agoWhat's the name of that art style? It's like 90s clip art and I hate it.
- r721 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis ?
- shmde 3y agoyou have a whole subreddit dunking on the artstyle. corporate memphis aka Alegria Art. The artstyle is fucking stupid and outright pathetic. Looking at it makes me want to puke on it. https://old.reddit.com/r/fuckalegriaart/ https://old.reddit.com/r/fuckalegriaart/
- tlogan 3y agoI've raised this question several times, but it bears repeating: What's Google's rationale behind this decision? Domain management appears to be a crucial component of a comprehensive cloud solution. It may serve as a loss leader, but it's undeniably an effective entry point for both Google Workspace and Google Cloud. After all, competitors like AWS and Cloudflare offer this service.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- thomasrognon 3y agoGCP still has domain management via Cloud DNS. That isn't going away. This is just domain registration. I say this as someone who uses Google Domains and GCP and is upset at this decision.
- surajrmal 3y agoGCP is still retaining domain registration as well. The backing registrar is changing, but the Google Cloud Domains product is unaffected otherwise.
- prepend 3y agoI think it’s because GCP isn’t profitable and so they don’t want a loss leader for a product line that isn’t competitive with their other internal products. Typically you don’t want loss leaders for things that aren’t strategic or very profitable. Google is not a cloud company. So this is probably just reallocating resources toward more important things. I bet if domains was a loss leader to AdWords it would stick around.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- paganel 3y ago> Typically you don’t want loss leaders for things that aren’t strategic or very profitable. So does that mean that GCP itself is on the chopping block? I seem to remember a similar discussion regarding its future was in the air about 2-3 years ago.
- nicechianti 3y ago[dead]
- chanar 3y ago“This is an affiliate link. If you make a purchase from Squarespace, we may earn a commission.” What’s the reason to earn commission from Squarespace?
- LightBug1 3y agoMission Statement: Google no longer offers. As soon as possible.
- kstrauser 3y agoCancellation as a Service.
- yafbum 3y agoThis is what I think about when I see people wiring a bunch of Google assistant devices and compatible widgetry in their homes. Home tech is supposed to last 20 years+, so why be okay with putting things in the walls from a company that has a pretty thick-faced history of leaving markets that it finds itself unable to milk for advertising?
- rvz 3y agoLet's now predict the next product that Google is going to kill. I'll start: I pick Google Fi.
- politelemon 3y agoGKE
- schemescape 3y agoGoogle Voice
- idolofdust 3y agomost likely Google Podcasts next
- LikeBeans 3y agoPlease don't give them any ideas. "Unfortunately" I rely on Fi for travel. So convenient. Come on Google, please leave this one alone.
- DarkCrusader2 3y agoHow does this affect the .dev domains? I don't understand the governance around TLDs very deeply, but can SquareSpace jack up the prices? Can they disable/discontinue existing domains?
- justhw 3y agoI wrote this 9 years go > The last thing I trust Google with is my domains. They can outright ban or disable you just like with any of their products and not offer support or explanation. Google will eventually kill all products that do not help them sell ads. Keep that in mind. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8882243 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8882243
- ahnick 3y agoWho do you trust currently?
- traceroute66 3y ago> Who do you trust currently? Depending on the extent of trust you want, the ultimate (whilst being "reasonably" affordable) option is becoming a Nominet member. Nominet are the registry for .uk. Anybody (person or business) can become a member and the core benefit of membership is you effectively become your own registrar. As long as you pay the membership fee, Nominet don't care. You therefore cut out the middlemen. Sure, Nominet could theoretically cut off your domain (e.g. if you don't pay your membership fees). But the bar is much, much higher than $Mega_Corp. Unless you've got money to burn, probably a bit extravagant for only one domain name. But if you'll be needing a few it might be worth considering.
- zarzavat 3y agoCloud services are sold on the basis of an exchange. I build my product, or my entire business, on your cloud platform, submitting to a huge amount of risk by doing so. In return, you promise to minimize my risk by being a trustworthy and reliable steward of that platform. Cloud platforms are a lot like banks. The value proposition of a bank is not that they store your money: my mattress can do that. No, the value proposition of a bank is that it’s a safe and trustworthy place. There is some second-order thinking involved. If I believe that other businesses are questioning the future of a given cloud platform, then I might decide that I need to start migrating to another provider sooner rather than later. If everybody decides that they need to migrate then it could make the platform actually unprofitable. Like a bank run. Only there’s no FDIC protection for cloud platforms. Google clearly just doesn’t give a shit what people think of their cloud platform. That’s scary. It means they don’t understand that they’re in the trust business. They truly believe that they’re just selling computing services.
- surajrmal 3y agoGoogle domains is not a cloud product. Google cloud domains is. The latter is unaffected other than the fact the registrar backing the product is going to change to be square space. I'm not sure if any other major cloud vendor is the registrar backing their equivalent product.
- tyingq 3y agoMaking them one product seems possible/reasonable. Cloudflare does it.
- zinekeller 3y ago> I'm not sure if any other major cloud vendor is the registrar backing their equivalent product. How to shoot down your argument 101: Amazon (https://www.icann.org/en/accredited-registrars?iana-number=468&view-all=true https://www.icann.org/en/accredited-registrars?iana-number=4..., https://aws.amazon.com/route53/amazon-registrar-policies/ https://aws.amazon.com/route53/amazon-registrar-policies/, note that the third-party links are the registries itself like Verisign), Cloudflare (https://www.icann.org/en/accredited-registrars?iana-number=1910&view-all=true https://www.icann.org/en/accredited-registrars?iana-number=1..., https://www.cloudflare.com/products/registrar/ https://www.cloudflare.com/products/registrar/), and Microsoft (https://www.icann.org/en/accredited-registrars?iana-number=1330&view-all=true https://www.icann.org/en/accredited-registrars?iana-number=1..., https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service/manage-custom-dns-buy-domain https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service/manage-c...) are operating their own registrars.
- xtracto 3y agoSo nowadays I use google domain's feature of easy email forwarding (forward some xxyyy@mydomain.com to a personal email). Is there an alternative provider that can do that?
- carbocation 3y agoStill blows my mind that they did this about a year after announcing that Domains was out of Beta.
- lijok 3y agoAnd on this day a couple thousand more people learn that doing business with Google is a liability.
- buro9 3y agoI think the most shocking thing is that the link to Squarespace is an affiliate link. Google have sold Google Domains to Squarespace... but apparently, not for enough as they really really want to just make a few hundred bucks more from affiliate revenue. Is Google really in that much trouble?
- ttymck 3y agoPerhaps they were obligated to do this under the terms of the sale? Maybe it's not for affiliate revenue, but just because some product manager at squarespace needed another metric to track?
- fakedang 3y agoMore likely, Squarespace just wants to track the number of users searching from Google Domains, before the brand is completely sunset.
- krmboya 3y agoI heard something like this a while ago. Paraphrasing: A company is first run by engineers (becomes a well made product that people love), then it is run by MBAs (so that it looks good on the balance sheet), then it is run by lawyers (to extract every bit of value created), then it dies (i.e sustained only by inertia). But I find it hard to figure out what stage Google is at in this (maybe simplictic) progression.
- hankchinaski 3y agoMoved all my domain registration to cloudflare
- quickco 3y agoAdding a mention of Hover.com which has a very simple user interface. So ads or other junk. I’ve been a happy customer for years without any issues.
- acdha 3y agoThe most Google-y thing about this is that their FAQ links point to a page which is blocked behind a login form which requires a Google.com corporate account. https://support.google.com/domains/answer/13689670?hl=en https://support.google.com/domains/answer/13689670?hl=en
- keep_reading 3y agoHighly recommend dnsimple.com Small company, great service, fastest DNS replication I've ever experienced, and a solid clean API
- economist420 3y agoNever again will I trust google. I'm so sick of this.
- h0nd 3y agoEven their own domains are abused by spammers heavily.