Google Domains is out of beta

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&#x27;s called this month).<p>If you ever want to change your company&#x27;s primary domain... you can&#x27;t. We&#x27;re stuck now with a legacy domain (configured with an alias so it&#x27;s invisible to others) that we can&#x27;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.

Is this yet another service to be added to Google&#x27;s graveyard in a few years time?<p>Domain registration is not Google&#x27;s core business and I can&#x27;t see it being massively profitable(double digits), so it will likely face the chop soon.<p>I am sure they will offer a way to transfer your domains, however, why go through this pain when the outcome is inevitable.<p>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&#x27;t even register. As a result customer retention and satisfaction will not be very high on the priority list.

Unpopular opinion: Google Domains is easy to use, has great customer support, and offers competitive prices.<p>I&#x27;ve used Google Domains for years and I don&#x27;t have any complaints.

Until Google comes out and segregates actual and false positive ToS violations such that it doesn&#x27;t kill your entire Google account, I can&#x27;t in good conscience use any additional Google services.<p>This began TEN YEARS AGO when Google+ &quot;real name&quot; violations disabled your entire Google account. Gmail, Google Photos, AdWords, everything. This is completely unacceptable and has never been addressed or rectified.<p>If you use Gmail then your Google account is simply too large of a single point of failure to risk further exposure.<p>What happens when a false positive disables my account? Can I still transfer my domains out? I&#x27;m not convinced that&#x27;s true so thanks but no thanks.

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

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&#x27;s part, in some other service? Does the domain just expire because you can&#x27;t access your account?<p>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?<p>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.

But...why? I mean, I get it -- domain registrars aren&#x27;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&#x27;m damned sure that Google isn&#x27;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.<p>[1] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;killedbygoogle.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;killedbygoogle.com&#x2F;</a>

&quot;We launched Google Domains in 2015 to be the easiest place to find, buy, and manage a domain.&quot;<p>I&#x27;m sure we&#x27;re all painfully aware of the longevity of many Google services that are considered &quot;in production&quot;, there&#x27;s a long list of things shut down.<p>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?

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&#x27;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.<p>This means that any itty bitty TOS violation on one account means you potentially lose <i>all</i> 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&#x2F;SDN country by name in a comment field in a Google Wallet&#x2F;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.<p>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 &quot;Login with Google&quot; button.<p>Google is not trustworthy. Don&#x27;t give them your money or data. Register a domain with someone who isn&#x27;t Google, and point it somewhere that isn&#x27;t Gmail. There are step-by-step instructions on how to do this on my website.

I started using Google Apps for Domains pretty much the day it came out. 3 of my companies are using Gsuite right now.<p>But all my domains tied to a Google Account that could get cancelled with no recourse?<p>No, I think I&#x27;ll pass.

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

If you’re buying a domain, you should consider <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;gandi.net&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;gandi.net&#x2F;</a><p>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

Since complaining on Hacker News is the only way to effectively reach Google employees, I&#x27;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.

Given Google&#x27;s habit of having some &quot;AI&quot; randomly kill someone&#x27;s account, combined with a total lack of customer service, I can&#x27;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&#x27;s something I&#x27;ll probably get sorted soon.

Domains are incredibly cheap for what you get, but they&#x27;re harder to use than they need to be. Someone shouldn&#x27;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&#x2F;Jellyfin&#x2F;Nextcloud running on their own hardware.<p>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.<p>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&#x27;ll never offer end-to-end encryption.<p>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.<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;anderspitman&#x2F;awesome-tunneling" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;anderspitman&#x2F;awesome-tunneling</a>

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 &quot;oh that is a different department&quot; but no follow-through on connecting me to the right one. It was bizarre.

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

Judging by my own initial thoughts to this and the confirming commentary, I&#x27;d say that Google sure has built quite a reputation.

Does that mean it&#x27;s cancelled then? ;)

Hopefully incidents like [1] will never happen outside of the beta.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23417046" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23417046</a>

Over&#x2F;under for how long it&#x27;ll be before it&#x27;s shut down?

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.

Looking how much of a mess they made ending the free Gsuite accounts with the multi-users, mail routing etc. you&#x27;d be a fool to trust Google products for any free feature.<p>They even promised the free gsuite accounts would be free forever in writing and they aren&#x27;t, so imagine relying on any feature of Google domains.<p>I&#x27;m wondering how long until certain aspects of gmail aren&#x27;t free anymore.

I would never trust google with a product that isn&#x27;t ads for long term use.

As someone leery of tying my domain to my Google account, I&#x27;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.<p>As I no longer use the web hosting, storage, or anything else like that I&#x27;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.

Here only to read all (deserved) negative comments on Google products management. I wasn&#x27;t expecting less.

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.<p>I&#x27;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&#x27;re mysteriously locked out with no way to log back in and no one to contact to sort it out?

Aside from all the very good reasons people are giving for not using google, the question I&#x27;m asking is<p>What is google doing in the domain space that is different from any other provider? What&#x27;s their unique USP?<p>Anyone technical can use another provider and connect to Google services if they&#x27;d like (or other service).<p>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.<p>So, the question is, who is this for?

I&#x27;ve started using Cloudflare&#x27;s domains and getting away from Google. Their reputation of shutting down services and accounts is well established

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

I wanted a &quot;.dev&quot; 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 &quot;.dev&quot; domains anywhere. Was this change part of Google Domains leaving beta? Or is it completely unrelated?

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

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

With my experiences with Google in the past, I would <i>never</i> trust my domains with them. Not my personal ones, and especially not my business ones. I also don&#x27;t trust their customer support.

&gt; 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.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;domains.google&#x2F;support&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;domains.google&#x2F;support&#x2F;</a>

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&#x27;t be fooled a second time.

I&#x27;ve found Google domains to be considerably more expensive than Namecheap. Anyone have a good reason to use it over other registrars?

Interesting when I clicked the link they offered a 20% discount. Two minutes later I get an email offering a 30% discount.<p>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.

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

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

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

no thanks! If you go against the popular narratives, you&#x27;ll be banned from using your domains.

It looks like a lot of people here are unhappy with this. I&#x27;ll add a voice as someone who recently used Google Domains and had a pretty good experience.

lol no thanks. Congrats to all the engineers that have worked on this and getting this out the door, but I don&#x27;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.<p>I&#x27;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).

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

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

How long until this service is shut down?

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

Oh man, this comments...<p>The number of products, Google actually &quot;killed&quot; 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.<p>Yes, killedbygoogle.com is fun, but come on...

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

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

What do they offer vs some powerful competitor like Namecheap?

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

Google&#x27;s &quot;customer support&quot; is so bad, I think it would be a huge mistake to let them control your domains. Dealing with Google&#x27;s &quot;support&quot; has been a nightmare over and over on many unrelated issues.<p>They also abandon many projects or hold you hostage in extremely inconvenient ways.[1]<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.androidauthority.com&#x2F;gsuite-legacy-free-edition-3093722&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.androidauthority.com&#x2F;gsuite-legacy-free-edition-...</a>

Never ever.

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

They’re also giving a 20% discount for getting domains from them. Keep in mind the Google domains is not available in all countries: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.google.com&#x2F;domains&#x2F;answer&#x2F;4639612?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.google.com&#x2F;domains&#x2F;answer&#x2F;4639612?hl=en</a>