
Google Domains - jnymck
http://google.com/domains
======
ep103
So now my domains can be hosted by a company famed for its responsive and
transparent customer service!

~~~
anigbrowl
I would far rather deal with Google than GoDaddy or some of the other domain
registrants I've dealt with. I realize some people have had poor customer
service experiences with Google, but mine have always been OK. Obviously I
speak as a consumer, if I were running a business depending on Google services
my support needs would be more urgent and my expectations higher.

~~~
GigabyteCoin
>I would far rather deal with Google than GoDaddy

Would you rather deal with Google as opposed to Namecheap? A great company
with superb support that specializes in nothing but domain names and dedicated
hosting?

I wouldn't.

~~~
AlyssaRowan
NameCheap _still_ doesn't even have DNSSEC.

People have been asking for, what, five years now?

------
toomuchtodo
[http://domains.google.com/about/features.html](http://domains.google.com/about/features.html)

Integration with Google cloud resources (a la AWS Route 53), 10 million
lookups/year free, pricing appears off the bat to be $12/year, free private
registration.

And support! "With Google Domains, you get phone and email support (M-F, 9am
to 9pm EST)."

~~~
pgrote
I wonder how they will staff the support. Contractors or employees? Has Google
bought a domain company recently?

This looks like a sensational service.

Curious the sign up for an invitation only asked if you've bought a domain
before.

~~~
pdkl95
If they do decide to staff the support for _this_ service, instead of their
usual "bot or FAQ/help-page only" annoyance... how long until all their OTHER
services figure out that this is how you contact a human at Google? Youtube,
in particular, comes to mind.

------
joeframbach
Serious question: What happens in three years when Google decides to "sunset"
this service like Wave, Labs, Reader, Buzz, Code Search, Knol, etc? Their
target audience doesn't know how to work with registrars, which puts them in
the worst possible situation when Google Domains is dropped. Will they help
their users transition to other registrars?

~~~
colinbartlett
Has Google ever "sunset" a product they actually charge money for? That might
help us understand what they'd do in this case. But I don't think there's a
lot of precedent there.

~~~
dublinben
Google discontinued (presumably paid) radio and television ads a few months
after starting each.

This does seem entirely like a whimsical side project for Google. If you want
a reliable domain registrar, find one that doesn't do anything else.

~~~
JeremyBanks
Google is not just a registrar, but a registry, with 19 TLDs that they will
operate: [https://www.google.com/registry/](https://www.google.com/registry/)

They're in the domain business now, and I don't think they're going to drop
out any time soon.

~~~
yeukhon
I see the first popular attempt to register if .NEWS is available is
__hacker.news __.

------
spindritf
This is great. Google is a company that is very serious about security, and
has essentially no customer support so no way to social engineer your way
around that security. Perfect for domains.

~~~
boredinballard
Google does indeed have customer support, for paid products. Very good support
in my opinion, I've called them for Google Apps support and Adwords, they were
very helpful and hold times were super short.

~~~
threeseed
I've had the opposite experience.

Dreadful support for paid Google Apps although we were a small startup.

------
chatmasta
So it is now possible to give Google, who is solely responsible for a high
percentage of your site's traffic, access to:

\- Your traffic (Search)

\- Your analytics (Analytics)

\- Your income (AdSense)

\- Your advertising (AdWords)

\- Your hosting (App Engine)

\- Your DNS (Cloud DNS)

\- Your domains (this)

That gives their search algorithm a pretty full picture of who owns your
website, where you get your content, how much customers like it, any other
sites you own, how much traffic you get, how much money you make.

And they can delist you whenever they want.

No thanks. I'll keep my Google to a minimum.

~~~
pdkl95

       > So it is now possible to give Google
                                       ^^^^^^
    

I believe you misspelled "NSA"?

Jokes (sorta?) aside, this betrays a serious failure in the way many people
use network services such as those in your list - they often lack a _second
source_. Since when did it become ok to have only one supplier for your
mission-critical needs?

~~~
tomlongson
Google != NSA. Google is working with the NSA to provide front door access,
but are working to prevent back door spying by the agency. This may sound
pedantic, but it's better to be precise with serious issues such as this.

------
rhizome
Not on your life. Domains simply aren't complicated or expensive enough to
think twice about feeding Google's consolidation and analytics game. Perhaps
harsh, but come on. Domains.

~~~
Paul_Dessert
Agree 1000%. Just one more way for them to connect the dots. No thanks.

~~~
colinbartlett
They have had registrar-level access for quite some time already, presumably
using that to "connect the dots" of domain ownership. So this just takes it to
the next level... now they can see 'inside' private domain registrations? What
else could they do with this that they can't already do? Hmm.

~~~
personZ
They can see every DNS lookup if you use their nameservers.

------
Thiz
They stole $200 from my adsense account accusing me of clicking my own ads,
which I never did. Their automated system never let me prove I didn't do it so
they just stole my money.

I give a flying fuck if I was a false positive in a huge corporation with
millions of customers they can't serve all with quality support.

No, Im not giving them my business never again until they apologize.

~~~
Garbage
I don't know if this is true or not, but some guy has "leaked" some
information about AdSense "fraud" \-
[http://pastebin.com/qh6Tta3h](http://pastebin.com/qh6Tta3h)

~~~
john2x
Wouldn't keeping someone earning $5000 on AdSense make more sense financially
for them?

------
tdicola
I don't get it, I already have a domain managed by Google with my Google apps
account. I understand they shut off this service for new signups a while back.
So are they releasing a _new_ managed domain service? How long until I am
forced to go through some ugly merge process to put my Google apps account
onto this new system? Would really love to hear the rationale for killing the
old service to replace it with something that looks a heck of a lot like the
old service. After shutting down Reader and all the trouble my Google apps
account already gives me (every new Google service has issues with Google apps
accounts in my experience) and other annoying things I really hope Google
doesn't screw up my email. If it ain't broke don't fix it!

~~~
renata
This is domain _registration_ , not Google Apps associated with a domain.
Google is moving into GoDaddy/Namecheap/Gandi space here. Once this opens up I
imagine you can just transfer your domain from your current registrar and
nothing will change in your Google Apps account.

------
eli
Hasn't Google's been a registrar for years? You could register a domain for
$10 as part of signing up for Apps at least 2 or 3 years ago.

I guess the new part is they're offering it standalone? Seems like a lead gen
effort for AdWords/AdSense more than a serious product.

~~~
freejack
That offering was just a referral/signup for Godaddy and enom.

~~~
eli
Didn't realize that. Maybe I was confusing it with their service acting a
_registry_ (as opposed to registrar):
[https://www.google.com/registry/index.html](https://www.google.com/registry/index.html)

I could have sworn it was possible to register domains directly through
Google, but I guess it could have been a cleverly disguised front-end to
another registrar.

------
tinkerrr
"No additional cost for private registration" is badly required in the
industry, and glad to see Google take the lead.

Also, there should be an option to 301 redirect your blogspot blog to a domain
held by Google. Lots of bloggers have outgrown their .blogspot.com blogs.

~~~
anonova
Gandi ([https://www.gandi.net/](https://www.gandi.net/)) is quite well-known
for having free private domain registration.

~~~
JoshTriplett
And unlike many such services, they still list you as the owner of the domain;
they just mask the email/address/phone information.

~~~
anonova
I'm not sure if this is a positive or negative comment, but I'll explain why
they do that.

There are two main ways to mask domain name whois information: 1) go through a
proxy service, i.e., a company buys the domain under their name and gives you
control, or 2) effectively use another entity's contact information with the
exception of name, which is what Gandi does.

a) is rather risky to both parties. You do not own the domain, but another
entity does. If you somehow lose the domain name or the entity holding the
name goes under, you won't be able to get it back because it technically never
belonged to you. The holder is also now legally responsible for the domain
name.

b) is a much safer route with the constraint that your name must be attached
to the domain name. This makes it so you always remain responsible for and the
registrant of the domain name. It is yours.

~~~
JoshTriplett
> I'm not sure if this is a positive or negative comment

Very much positive, for exactly the reasons you specified.

------
laureny
I'm excited. Not so much by the fact that Google now provides this service
(which I may or may not use) but because this is going to put a tremendous
amount of pressure on other ISP's, and competition is badly needed in this
field.

------
sudonim
I can't be the only one who likes using different businesses for different
services? It's bad enough to use Google for email, calendar, docs. I wouldn't
buy with / transfer my business domains to them.

[http://gandi.net](http://gandi.net) and
[http://dnsimple.com](http://dnsimple.com) are both great options in this
space.

------
hysan
> Talk to us

> We aren’t ready for everyone to join yet (you currently need an invitation
> code to buy or transfer a domain), so we want those who join to play an
> active role in helping us improve. We're working hard to offer our customers
> the best domain experience possible, and we welcome your input, questions
> and feedback.

For a company that is notoriously bad at communicating with its customers,
this is the one thing I would expect Google to not get right. Even at the
private invite scale, I seriously wonder if Google will be communicating with
customers with the tact and empathy required of good customer service.

------
vachi
google has attempted domain names previously, and it has previously sucked,
very badly, 1\. you could never get to a customer support, no phone number,
and emails were all auto responses sending you to faq 2\. there was no
dedicated dashboard for domain management, billing etc

this is a revamp and product consolidation and it is super late to the game,
hopefully the transition for current users will be easy

~~~
freejack
The reason it was unsupported was because they were just fronting for godaddy
and enom and expected that you'd get support for the domains from those
registrars directly.

------
lsh123
Interesting. Google is going to directly compete with GoDaddy which is about
to have IPO. Curious to see the impact on the GoDaddy's price.

------
owenversteeg
Based on a screenshot [0] the price appears to be $12/yr.

[0]
[http://domains.google.com/about/img/sprites/features.png](http://domains.google.com/about/img/sprites/features.png)

------
gmays
A couple weeks ago when the new Google My Business platform
([http://www.google.com/business/](http://www.google.com/business/)) was
introduced I thought it was very interesting. To me it signaled Google's
interest in entering the small business game by building a platform for SMBs
to have a consolidated online presence.

They wouldn't have combined the products and created a platform if they didn't
plan to expand it. I thought about how significant it'd be if Google included
some sort of website builder along with the Google My Business platform. They
organically have more reach with SMBs than any competitor can afford to buy.
That combined with the high switching costs of websites and they have a
massive opportunity as long as they don't misunderstand their target market.

Now they're offering domains and teaming up with some of the biggest website
builders out there. I'd wager that 1) it's only a matter of time until their
domain service is offered as part of Google My Business and 2) they offer
their own website builder/CMS.

The website builder industry is competitive and noncompetitive at the same
time. The companies that spend the most on marketing have the shittiest
products and the companies with the most product potential 1) don't advertise
or 2) don't cater to small businesses as much as they should. They're all
asleep at the wheel in one way or another.

------
pdknsk
> Use Google Synthetic Records for integration with Google App Engine,
> subdomain forwarding and Google Apps setup

What is Google Synthetic Records? Google Search doesn't know.

~~~
colinbartlett
If I had to guess, it offers a service similar to what Route 53 and DNSimple
offer for cloud-hosted apps: A CNAME-like functionality but that functions at
the root level record.

------
lwh
Will my pagerank increase if I register with one of their TLDs?

------
vowelless
> Create up to 100 email aliases with your domain, such as
> help@your_company.com or sales@your_company.com, and have them forwarded to
> existing email accounts, like you@gmail.com. This way, your email is a
> professional reflection of your business.

So there are no actual email boxes included?

~~~
jyxent
I assume that is where Google Apps comes in.

~~~
andybak
Or a free Gmail account for incoming mail. The only missing part of the jigsaw
would be an SMTP server - otherwise your email appears to others with
something like 'sent on behalf of' or similar (depending on the mail client).

~~~
dclara
GoDaddy gives you one email box with your domain name so that when you reply
the email, it is sent from the real email account.

------
jqueryin
Just as an aside, the startup I work at provides these services with Google
Apps included. We handle automatic domain registration, DNS setup, automate
the process of verifying your Google Apps account, allow Single Sign-On to
GMail, and more. I'm guessing the tech crowd would particularly find the
automated google verification interesting.

The other best part is we match the pricing of a Google Apps for Business
account and offer a _15 day free trial_ with no credit card required.

We partner with the likes of Startup Weekend and .CO since our goal is to help
you get your ideas online fast.

For those of you interested in checking it out, I'd love feedback:

[https://pop.co](https://pop.co)

~~~
pbreit
Looks pretty nice. I'm still startled at how lousy the options are for new
(smaller) businesses wanting to get online (ie, Wix and Weebly).

Google Apps is now $50/year?

~~~
gmays
I agree with your point on lousy options for small businesses. See my other
comment in this thread. The SMB website market is ripe for disruption.

~~~
drusenko
I'd absolutely love to hear your feedback on how we (Weebly) can get better!
We are constantly improving the product, but there's still a long ways to go.

~~~
jqueryin
Shoot me an email at coreyATcoreyballou.com as we're interested in a feature
of your API that doesn't appear to be publicly available but I'm sure you have
in place.

------
pyrophane
Any idea what TLDs they currently support?

------
nospecinterests
prediction:

Lots of people will sign-up. These people will love the service. They will
come to need this service for their businesses to survive and function
properly. Two years afterward Google will do what they have done time and time
again, close down the service - for unknown reasons - at every users expense.

Will it happen? I don't know but they just don't have my trust for the long
term. Yes, I know that you can transfer domains fairly easily but nothing is
ever that easy.

------
andrewgjohnson
Continues to surprise me that there isn't some kind of registrar service as
part of the suite of services provided via AWS. I suppose ditto to the Google
Cloud platform. This is great, I'm especially drawn to the built in "up to
100" email aliases. Sounds like it may only cover the receiving of
@your_company.com emails and not sending but definitely a nice start,
particularly in a Google Apps is pay-only world.

------
insky
I remember getting my Bigfoot for life email address. It didn't exactly last
that long. But basically that was email forwarding. But you had to change your
reply-to in outgoing emails, and it was a little confusing for recipients.

Email forwarding, doesn't stop Google reading the mail as it goes through
transit. Which is a little unsettling. I'd be interested to hear/read their
privacy policy regarding this.

------
tambourine_man
I'm glad they are more focused on their core competences and are not
distracted by side projects.

I'm also glad to see the amount of work that went on developing this site,
white text over white background, for example, is super readable. Sweating the
details indeed.

[http://i.imgur.com/rcTAu9l.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/rcTAu9l.jpg)

~~~
jfoster
I think this is an MVP. The domain search functionality leads to a form where
you request an invite, driven by Google Forms.

------
bhartzer
Really, Google? You are calling the new gTLDs "domain endings"? Is that what
we're supposed to call them?

~~~
bjt
The tie-in with Weebly, Squarespace, Shopify, etc. tells me they're targeting
the low end of the market. Freelance photographers, caterers, and people
currently selling stuff on Etsy.

If I were targeting that market, I would also prefer "domain endings" over
"gTLDs".

~~~
bhartzer
bjt, that target market needs to be educated. Call them what they are, and
don't make up "silly names" for them. What if they were selling pickup trucks?
Would they call it a car that has a place in the back for your stuff?

------
nachteilig
Right now I have a reseller account with OpenSRS/Tucows, and I have to say
that this service from Google interests me. OpenSRS has seemingly been stuck
in the 90s with UI stuff for a while now, and recently started charing $3/year
extra for private registration.

Looks like I'll give it a try as soon as I get an invite.

------
robomartin
Right or wrong, and from more than one angle, this is the way I look at it:

First, the last thing I want on the internet is a monopoly. Google, for all
intents and purposes, is a monopoly when it comes to search and advertising.
Because of that it has unique power to attempt to own other areas. If Google
was known for great customer service and generally benevolent behavior this
might be OK. The reality is that many of us have had really ugly experiences
with this company.

I don't buy the distinction being made in terms of paid vs. unpaid services.
Every Google service is paid. Every single one of them. Don't think so? Then
why doesn't Google turn off ads on "free" services? No, people are paying with
cash or with eyeballs-on-adds. Either way Google is monetizing each and every
set of eyeballs in some way. "Free" is an illusion.

Competition is great, but Google is not a competitor it's a nassive search
monopoly that could easily use that monopoly to favor any one of it's products
over competitors who depend on Google search and rankings for their very
survival.

At a minimum it is a potentially huge conflict of interest. If Google
registers your domains, hosts your sites, runs your ads, places ads on your
site, runs your email, provides your analytics and provides your search-based
traffic you are one button click away from various incredible nightmare
scenario each and every morning 365 days per year.

So, no, thanks, but no. I've been saying "no" to you for years, ever since
that time you behaved badly, cost my clients a huge chunk of their business
and all we could do was scream at a computer monitor.

No, thank you. I will stick with other excellent choices for domain
registration. I will also stick to Linode and AWS for my servers. And I will
stick to building sites supported by something other than advertising revenue.
I will also host my own email, which isn't hard at all. I will use your
analytics and, if needed, I will do some advertising with you. Alhough,
lately, using Facebook intelligently for that last part is producing better
results.

In other words, having learned my lessons I will not allow my clients or
myself to walk into a situation where you can hurt us by behaving as you often
do.

I just can't see trusting Google. Trust is one of those things that costs
massively more to regain once lost. Google has done absolutley nothing to
regain the trust of those of us who have seen what can happen.

Live long and prosper.

------
kolev
At $12/year, I'm not leaving GoDaddy, which pricing nobody can beat. With the
Domain Club pricing, I get .com at $8.19. The only thing GoDaddy lacks is an
API, but can't pay 50% just for this luxury.

------
dcc1
1\. Can't pay with bitcoin so staying with namecheap

2\. Google offers 0 support

3\. Google rolls over to quickly to copyright requests, whats to stop them
from pulling the domain from under you

No thanks

~~~
tomlongson
Love that Namecheap is making it easy to pay!

------
briholt
Is there nothing Google won't compete with?

~~~
TeMPOraL
As long as they keep providing superior services, I'm personally fine with
that.

~~~
shiftpgdn
Can you name a product where Google provides superior customer service?

~~~
TeMPOraL
I didn't mean consumer service, I meant the product. And that would be pretty
much every one out there - search, maps, e-mail, cloud documents...

------
joell
Request Invite:

[https://domains.google.com/registrar](https://domains.google.com/registrar)

------
kin
Great news to me, recently switched from GoDaddy to Namecheap and I still
don't like the experience.

------
waitingkuo
Is it a Business as a Service? Seems it'll integrate lots of SaaS such like
Shopify, Weebly, ...etc

------
fuzz_junket
Oh look. An opportunity to let Google own even more of the Internet. Let's do
it.

------
stormbrew
Free whois privacy. Hopefully this pushes some other dns providers to do the
same.

~~~
hackuser
"Private" domain registrations result in your domain being registered to the
privacy service and not to you. At least, that was true for the ones I looked
into.

That may not matter to some people, but it could be a problem to have that
critical resource outside your organization's control.

EDIT: See the posts re Gandhi, whose privacy service apparently leaves the
domain registered to you.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7934145](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7934145)

------
thegeomaster
Any suggestions on how one gets an invite? How broad is the program?

------
southflorida
and speed of site will never be an issue (host wise)... and indexing out the
gate. wish i would have waited to buy that domain i just had to have saturday
night :/

~~~
uptown
What'd you buy?

------
esbonsa
Have you purchased a domain name before? yes and no...

------
jonthn
When a giant shakes, everyone moves. It doesn't even have to be particularly
disruptive -- this is good for everyone who owns or brokers domains.

------
saeedjabbar
Looking forward to giving this a shot.

------
pstop
An invite only beta to an at request service? That's kinda dumb. It most
certainly won't be a representative sample.

~~~
dragonwriter
> It most certainly won't be a representative sample.

They don't want a representative sample, and they say that (and how they want
it to be non-representative) right on the page. So, why is that even an
objection?

~~~
pstop
You're absolutely correct, and had I read the "Talk to us" section, I wouldn't
have written that comment. Thank you for pointing it out.

------
lsiebert
So, where can we get an invite?

------
badclient
I'm amazed that Google did not buy godaddy when it was purchased by private
equity.

~~~
Angostura
If you were Google, would you want to support/build on/integrate GoDaddy's
existing systems, or would you prefer to go for a clean start?

------
marban
Your move, Amazon.

------
sogen
wow, first Google's phone support

~~~
dharma1
Google apps for business have phone support

------
2close4comfort
Ahhhhh...its invite only what gives?

------
fourstar
Once again, Google trying to consolidate all the eggs into a single basket.

------
dota168
Invite-only beta....

watch the hype fade away in a week and everyone will forget this exists (hello
Google+)

~~~
thedufer
Yes, I remember quite distinctly when that happened to GMail as well.

~~~
vemy
GMail was a completely different ballgame. This just looks like your generic
domain registrar. There are thousands of them already.

~~~
ZenPro
There were thousands of email providers.

~~~
LoganCale
And they were all shit.

