I'm sad to see this, not b/c I like Google, but because domain names are otherwise a manipulative space, and Google was saving us from that.<p>Domain service - name registry - is a weird market because it includes cross-subsidizing businesses and the information has value (and people will pay for anonymity to avoid hassle), so buy decisions aren't just price/performance.<p>Google and Cloudflare can offer it near cost just to build goodwill in their clients (i.e., to save them from predation). Cloudflare promises for renewals to only pass through their costs, which makes sense (they make back their customer acquisition cost on the first purchase).<p>What's the business model of others like porkbun? By hypothesis, you have to pay more to go without the cross-subsidy. If cost is on par, then you might expect them to be marketing the information or to customers somehow. Perhaps just making it back on anonymity charges?<p>At a minimum, the company would need to have some real reputational concerns about maintaining good relations with customers. E.g., with porkbun, it's super-cute in an ostensibly-benign jurisdiction, but it's a completely hidden LLC who's privacy concerns seem limited only to WHOIS anonymity. What exactly prevents them (or any successor in interest) from misusing the information they have?<p>On the internet, associating real people with IP's will always be a key goal of governments and criminals, and yet domain name services are a free-for-all with no underlying privacy guarantees.
Yet another business Google bails on. Add that to the pile. Gee wonder why Google Cloud is getting smashed by AWS and Azure—maybe because nobody trusts Google to not flake out on that business or key products within it. They need some management changes!
> In an unexpected announcement today, Google Domains is “winding down following a transition period,” (…)<p>Google killing a product should no longer be a surprise to anyone. It’s the opposite of Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition: everybody expects it.<p><a href="https://killedbygoogle.com" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://killedbygoogle.com</a><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spanish_Inquisition_(Monty_Python)#:~:text=The%20sketches%20are%20notable%20for%20their%20principal%20catchphrase%2C%20%22Nobody%20expects%20the%20Spanish%20Inquisition%21%22" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spanish_Inquisition_(Monty...</a>
(in the voice of David Attenborough) And thus starts the great domain migration of 2023. 10 million fledgling domains begin their search for safety in new homes, far away from the coming impending onslaught of upsells and limited time offer emails. Some will find refuge in Cloudflare, others, not so.
I just bought my domain from Google weeks ago. I genuinely considered killedbygoogle.com while making my purchase, and I was like, "Surely domains.google isn't going anywhere, right? I mean, they even have their own TLD!"<p>Apparently, I was so wrong. We'll have to see if Squarespace goes for any exorbitant price hikes.
I literally dont understand why they did this. Their product was fine as is so didn't need more features, maintenance burden minimal. Isn't google domains just a UI for their GCP domains product? Will that get shut down? Will all my domains suddenly have a pointless premium on them?<p>Cloudflare, please gain tld parity asap!
At least we now know that Google really can't commit to anything. What was even the point of restructuring into Alphabet if they're never going to do anything other than ads, search, videos, and email.
This is so disappointing. I never had an issue with Google Domains. It offered free WHOIS protection, easy to buy a domain and set it up. Nothing fancy. No BS fees. Shame
Yet <a href="https://domains.google/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://domains.google/</a> is has no mention of it and still invites people to move their domain to Google....<p>I suppose that's ok if the move to Squarespace goes smoothly.
Me with 100+ domains with Google:<p><i>chuckles</i> I'm in danger!<p>I should have known. I started a transition for most of my stuff to cloudflare anyway. I kind of figured this would come eventually.
So disappointing. Google domains is such a clean interface for buying domains, I really thought it was one of the few Google products that would last. They’re really not afraid to burn their customers over there at Google
I'm a long-term, several domains user of Google Domains and disappointed to learn of this sale.<p>Several others have suggested porkbun and I'm interested to see that it provides an API (<a href="https://porkbun.com/api/json/v3/documentation" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://porkbun.com/api/json/v3/documentation</a>).<p>Do folks have experience with this API?<p>I have a hacky a solution to update Google Domains Dynamic DNS record but would value a more functional API to update DNS records. Had I known about this before today, I may have migrated my domains to porkbun for this reason alone.
This is bullshit... i use Google domains, particularly the easy email redirect. Google domains is a PAID product... for xxxx sake, I already didn't trust google, but this is the nail in their coffin for me.
At this point, you should assume any Google service is purely temporary. If you're relying on any Google product, start migrating now on your own timeline before they give up and make you migrate on their timeline.
I've been using Google Domains for a few years (previously used Namecheap); but, a few months ago, I took a domain I don't actively use and transferred it to Porkbun after reading so many positive comments on HN about that registrar. I was thinking, "Well, you never know about Google, so I may as well see how it goes, just in case." Have, indeed, been very pleased with Porkbun. The article says it'll be some months before this deal goes through, but...<p>*Later edit*: Decided to go ahead and transfer the other domains there, too. Done.
I guess we know Google isn’t serious about Google Cloud any longer… I feel like this product is table stakes for a cloud.<p>Does this mark a new transition for google leadership? Will google start to sell their unwanted businesses instead of just killing them?
Does anyone know whether or not this ties in with Google Registry (a.k.a. Charleston Road Registry)? That's the entity that owns GTLDs like .app and .dev. I'm going to guess Google is hanging on to that part of it.
So I have a Google Workspace attached to my domain. How will this work when the domain is managed by another company? When I move my domains off Squarespace, how will my Workspace work? I’m confused if they are saying my Workspace services will migrate to Squarespace too?<p>> Squarespace will also provide billing and support services to Google Workspace customers<p>I have to admit, I’m at a total loss, this makes zero sense.
How long until the "don't trust Google to not kill a product" feeling becomes so widespread it begins to hurt them? I don't know any historical precedents...
Another headstone in the google graveyard. This one doesn't make any sense to me, either, unless there are weird regulatory issues they want to avoid since it seemed like a very popular registrar. Or maybe they just didn't want to staff any limited customer support team.
I knew better than to trust Google, and yet... I switched everything to Google Domains because the UI was very clean and the attempted upsells were minimal.<p>I had moved from GoDaddy to Name.com years prior for similar reasons but Name burned my good will.<p>Is there a service that replaces Google Domains in simplicity and not pushing add-ons?
Google simply has no incentive to serve the customer who uses them for domain management. They make so much money from ads that they're far more concerned about their ad revenue than they are about money from paying customers.
Now would be a good time for Cloudflare to announce they've (finally) added .app and .dev support.<p>Nonetheless, Squarespace isn't bad but I found their domain pricing to be overpriced to target the specific market that doesn't really care about domain pricing they just want their domain and Squarespace set up at once. I can't see myself sticking around post the grace period mentioned.
The thing I take biggest offense to is the fact that I hear about this from Bloomberg before Google making any outreach. Also no mention of if Google Cloud Domains is impacted.
It says they’ll only honor existing prices for 12 months after the transaction closes.<p>Any recommendations on where/how to transfer to get a) similar price, b) mail forwarding, and c) self-service subdomains? (Maybe the last two are standard—I have no idea since I’ve always used Google Domains)
In my conversations with Google employees, no one actually wants to work there. There is little to no respect for the company. Turnover has been massive. Even folks that have been there for 5 years have 80% seniority.<p>The problem is not leadership or management. It is the owners. It is Larry and Sergey.
Does this impact Google apps (or whatever their grandfathered personal email hosting/google drive is called now)? I hope it's just the registration component, but I think I should plan the move to another email/file sharing provider.<p>EDIT: Looks it is answered here. We become customers of squarespace for that too, so I doubt it will be free after this. Time to plan the move. <a href="https://support.google.com/domains/answer/13689670" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://support.google.com/domains/answer/13689670</a>
I've been paying a tiny amount to use Google Cloud because the handful of domains I control were registered with Google Domains, in turn because I trusted Google to run a good registrar.<p>Maybe there was no special reason to use Google Cloud DNS, or the other Google Cloud services I use, with Google Domains. It's been so long since I set this all up that I honestly can't remember. But I wouldn't be revisiting any of that but for this announcement that Google Domains is turning down. Now, in the process of finding a new registrar, I'm revisiting all of it.<p>I'm a tiny customer, less than a rounding error for Google. But this still seems like a strategic error to me. How much can it cost to run a domain registrar? How does this weigh against the goodwill and trust gained from maintaining an important service you've implicitly promised that you would maintain?
for .com<p>Google Domains - $12/yr (includes private whois)<p>Squarespace - $20/yr (includes private whois)<p>Yeah, total rip off. There are plenty of Registrars that are at $12 (AWS), or less (Porkbun $9.73).<p>Google is double screwing it's users. First by selling them off, then by selling them to a price gouger.
Ugh, this makes me sad. Google Domains was hands down the simplest, most reliable, fastest domain service I ever used. I originally was on GoDaddy, then migrated everything to Namecheap, then migrated everything to Google Domains.<p>I hope they don't change anything for as long as possible. I hate having to deal with DNS busy work.<p>I have 97 domains with Google Domains. 20 of them are in active use. ~10 I manage for family and friends. ~10 are redirects. I'm embarrassed to say I have ~57 side project ideas (GitHub pages + Google Domains is a bad habit—looks like I would brainstorm about 1 per week). Maybe the fact that Google Domains made it so easy to buy and manage many domains was actually a bad thing for me, as I picked up too many. So maybe I should be less sad :).
Anyone knows how domain name pricing works? Why some domains are cheaper in first year and then 10 times expensive the next year?
Can a domain registrar exploit the situation where they know you have a good business around that domain so now the domain price per year is let's say 5,000 dollars?
Wow, I really can't trust and rely on Google for anything can I? This is absurd. I have so many domains I'll have to move over.<p>The UX at Squarespace is just terrible and I want nothing to do with it.
Does this sale include Google Cloud's "Cloud Domains" feature? <a href="https://cloud.google.com/domains/docs" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://cloud.google.com/domains/docs</a>
I was a Google die hard, everything except Reader that they killed made sense. At this point it seems like the CFO is in charge and no good product is safe.
I’ve been a (paying) customer of Google Domains for quite a number of years now. Better options have arisen for my needs over the years (largely family name domain parking and email aliases/forwarding), but it honestly hasn’t been worth my time to bother rejiggering everything and transferring it all out.<p>I guess now it is? How bad is Squarespace for this sort of “set it and forget it” kinda thing?
To the various people saying they’ll transfer their domains away, why is this bad that they transfer to another registrar company? Is there something concerning about Squarespace?
I purchase all my domains from AWS Route53 to prevent this kind of thing from happening.<p>I wonder what the rationale for doing this is? I just assumed cloud providers offered domain registration as a loss leader keep you in their ecosystem.<p>Can AWS offer support for “.dev” domains so I can transfer it there?
I think this one officially concludes “don’t trust Google for anything”.<p>Maybe I’m not familiar enough with GCP, but why is this not just rolled into GCP? Is it even possible to buy a domain on GCP when this rolls off?
This is interesting. Part of the fact that Google owned Domains was that GCP domain validation was smooth when doing this. Now, we probably have to do the slow motion validation. Bit annoying, honestly.<p>But, ah well.
I use email forwarding and won’t be switching to Porkbun because they do t offer wildcard email forwarding. Does anyone know any other provider that does offer it?
I never really even thought about using Google domains, from the first time I heard of it I assumed it would last a few years and they would shut it down.
This may be the last straw for me trusting Google. I say this as a paying Google photos user and owner of a pixel 6.<p>If they kill THIS nothing is off the table.<p>Time to find alternatives and even switch phones. No more all-in-ones platforms.<p>For a solid alternative I recommend Porkbun. They do just domains and nothing else, with a clean no bullshit UI.
God damn it. Google Domains was my registrar of choice because I figured I wouldn't have to ever think about logistics and their lookup rules. Ah well. I guess I'll see what Squarespace does to the experience. I'd transfer them to Cloudflare, but have similar concerns.
A little over a year ago, they came out of beta: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30688552">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30688552</a><p>There are so many comments in that thread advising not to use Google Domains (including my comment).
They still offer domain registration but within Google Cloud rather than a consumer facing product:<p><a href="https://cloud.google.com/dns" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://cloud.google.com/dns</a> (Cloud Domains)<p>Ostensibly to compete with AWS Route 53.
I recently moved my domains over to Google because it was the least sketchy option out of all the sketchy domain hosts.<p>I also figured hosting domains had to be pretty much zero effort and thus passive profit.<p>Can’t wait for all the Squarespace spam to hit!
It seems Domain is part of Cloud in Alphabet's revenue breakdown, which recently turned profit with just $191m in 23Q1. Not sure the exact term and accounting operation, but this sale of $180m may just double that line of income?
I don't think that domain registration would generate enough revenue for Google to care about it as a core business unit, especially because part of Google Domains' pitch was that they had all these obscure domains that were cheaper. My inference is that Google cared about domains because they were complementary to another, core business unit. The obvious one to me is Google Workspace: You come to Google, get your domain, set up your business email, and you're well on your way to having an online business presence. The big missing piece is a website.
What? Crap, my router has built-in support for Google domains for dynamic IPs so that's why I'm on them -- wanted my kids to have a nice name for a local Minecraft server. I assume that's going away.
I have 6 domains with google, thinking, why would they ever shutter this? It seems so low effort, and it's been up for 7ish years<p>Who do you use as a registrar? Why do you like them? Do you recommend them?
At least Google allowed me to pay in BRL, porkbun and others use just USD, with taxes and converting I'll pay a lot more for domains now... Well, stick with Brazilian domains now, that's a shame.
Hopefully a good place to ask:<p>My family name .com is still available. That should be very rare in 2023. The name has only 4 letters.<p>It is also a word that is hard to pronounce in the english speaking world and I hope to get a reasonable price with that argument. Chances for a company with that name are slim and I also have no company or business in that name (normal employed software dev that I am)<p>The squatter in question has a form up asking for contact details and initial offer.<p>How would I go about doing that and what should I expect price wise?
How will this affect websites which are using the static Firebase hosting bundled into the google domains deal?<p>As part of the Google Domains deal, I get free static hosting on Firebase…
You've got to be kidding me. I just transitioned to Google Domains. I'm really curious why Google decided to do this. Does anyone have insight?
>The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2023<p>Well, there's at least 2 weeks notice. Unlocking to prepare for a transfer...
This is incredibly annoying. I migrated all my domains from Badger to Google Domains. I'm really losing any remaining faith I have in Google, they kill any products that are remotely usable.
very interesting to sell it off when you still got a cloud division. at least with the recent AIaaS paradigm, they are not going to wind that down.<p>now is a good time as any for cloudflare to "amazon lightsail" their domain offerings.<p>but personally, i am still on the lookout for a good EU registrar with fair pricing and no risk of future acquisition.
The next closest thing to cancellation.<p>Why is the CEO still there at Google?<p>One day Google will really need developers and the developers won’t be there.
I use Google Domains frequently because they support domain forwarding for both HTTP and HTTPS requests. This is critical for end users that type or click an HTTP address.<p>Can anyone suggest a domain registrar that supports forwarding over SSL?
I like to use <a href="https://tld-list.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://tld-list.com/</a> for registrar shopping. It has a lot of data on costs and features for many registrars.
How many engineers should it take to maintain domains.google in a steady state, maybe fixing bugs and patching security vulnerabilities that come up, doing an occasional release?
I am so pissed. F U Google. Now I’ve gotta transfer all my domains to Cloudflare. Ugh.<p>How will this affect mx records? I’ve got my vanity domain acting as a front end to Google for work gmail and things?
This bites because there was a little-documented little integration between Google Domains and Gmail to allow you to use a custom domain for a personal Gmail address.
I never understood them being a domain registrar in the first place. Maybe as a back-up to secure an important internet core function. The seems quite (very) high.
I've been using them for my domains for a couple of years now. This is a bit upsetting. I guess I will transfer my domains to name cheap or something
Jeez, could they have possibly given less notice? Now I have to scramble to migrate all of my domains away from Google/Squarespace this weekend. Damn it.<p>I have zero desire to be in business with Squarespace.
Can we hopefully avoid the worn trope of Google killing products in this thread?<p>Because it's <i>not</i> being killed, it's being transferred to another company. (If this reporting is correct.)<p>Which is something to <i>celebrate</i>, not criticize. With Reader/Stadia/etc., wouldn't users prefer that it <i>had</i> been transferred rather than killed?