

Google offers Free Website with .in domains in India - akarambir
http://nainomics.blogspot.com/2011/11/wow-google-offers-free-website-with-in.html

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subbu
A great tool for domain harvesters. I expect all meaningful .in domains to
exhaust in a few months giving way to black market.

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singh
It requires a PAN number, which seems to be a unique identifier for the entity
that is registering the domain [1]

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_account_number>

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BuddhaSource
Can PAN card be verified using API? If so then who all can get access to that?

Its impossible to verify otherwise.

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srik
Partners include FISME(Federation of Indian Micro and Small & Medium
Enterprises), a not-for-profit that has a lot of pull within the government
and a really popular bank - ICICI (that has access to PAN numbers anyway); so
an internal service to verify PAN numbers would be quite possible.

PS - PAN numbers are like SSNs over here.

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esrauch
Are they like SSNs in that they are dangerous information to give out? The
grandparent post just wrote his in the comment and doesn't seem to concerned.

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comm_it
BlogSpot is banned at work, but is this similar to the 'Getting British
Business Online' (<http://www.gbbo.co.uk/>) thing in the UK?

Hmmm, I suppose not, as GBBO seems to be a partnership offer. Still, I think
more people should be aware of it :)

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helipad
GBBO is very poorly executed though.

Google Sites was never intended to be used for external sites, and the sites
are both difficult to navigate for the user and difficult to maintain for the
company.

The only redeeming factor of GBBO was the free .co.uk domain name, but that
only saved local businesses around £10.

~~~
comm_it
Yeah I agree the execution could've been much much better.

I do think it might've reduced the barrier for getting Mum & Dad's local shop
their own website though. As you say, its difficulty to maintain didn't help!

The upside is that after 30 days you can transfer your domain name away and
use it on your own site hosting, which is exactly what I did.

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yogrish
Great boost for small business in India who wants to make their presence more
visible outside their towns/cities.

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forkrulassail
It's sad that Google would associate themselves with an overage hosting
company as pathetic as Hostgator.

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ez77
Could you expand on that? I'm contemplating using Hostgator, mainly because it
has received fairly positive comments in HN (as a hosting company). The
"unlimited" promises seem too good to be true, though.

In any event, how can they be "overage" if they provide unlimited hosting? Do
you mean "overselling"?

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aith
I've been with Host Gator for years without issue. Support is good etc.
However you will get suspended for excessive usage on those shared 'unlimited'
plans. They might have the exact limits in the fine print, or you could ask a
live chat assistant.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _However you will get suspended for excessive usage on those shared
> 'unlimited' plans._ //

So fraudulent advertising then.

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orjan
They recently launched the same thing for Sweden:
<http://www.dittforetagonline.se/>

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manelvf
The same for Spain. Are we the new India? <http://www.conectatunegocio.es/>

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sebastianavina
just think on all those web development houses that are about to struggle...
It reminds me of one comment that talked about how google gave things for
free, killing innovation on those areas, and they killing the product...

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3112444>

~~~
jberryman
I can see this making it harder for web developers who want to charge too much
to hack together a crappy site for someone's restaurant, but that's not
killing innovation: that's progress.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Perhaps sebastianavina is trying to take a longer term view. That if local web
designers are all priced out the market by Google, as they can't work for free
and live, then there will be no local web designers in India. No local web
designers is going to mean that any distinct local style, artistic innovation,
is going to be quashed.

I know what you mean but can't help but feel if I was a small scale designer
working with local businesses then this could probably put me out of business.

I wonder if some less scrupulous designers will attempt to front-end these
sites; charge for design and then use the Google system to make the site,
etc..

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narad
Hostgator has an affiliate program offering $100 per sales. Will that be used
to cover the initial costs? Just thinking.

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brackin
This has been available in the UK for a long time, I got a few .co.uk's the
problem is you do need to use their google tools, changing the DNS information
required me emailing the service and they did it manually which is why it's
designed for small business.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Google offer a free website design/creation/domain and hosting service in the
UK? Link please.

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cpfohl
Anybody else a bit sad that it's all in English rather than Hindi and Bengali?
I can't read either, but having an option to read/create it in your native
language would certainly speed up acceptance...

~~~
pbhjpbhj
From <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_languages_of_India>

" _The official language of the Indian Union is Hindi with English as an
additional language for official work; [...]_ "

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akarambir
for small and medium enterprises, this is a great opportunity. But i don't
know if this would really increase web presence among small businesses as they
are inclined to traditional methods. I'm from India, and I've tried personally
with some small shop owners. But they don't understand the need to go web,
especially in Tier II and III cities.

~~~
BuddhaSource
Well its changing.

I know a steel trader (40+yrs old) with 2 person staff setup a website 1yr
back. These days he is getting queries from pan India & also from big
companies. He spend some money on SEO at the beginning. In the past he tried
all types of classified but never happened that a company like Godrej reach
out for quote.

This is just one example.

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kusum18
This is great stuff. One major hickup solved for SMB's . Good service going in
hand with great support .

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rrpp
Why doesn't Google promote innovation in United States? US is going through a
pretty big crisis.

