
First .dev Domains Go Live - adamschwartz
https://blog.google/technology/developers/hello-dev/
======
benologist
On a recent thread Google personnel mentioned that ICANN forces all domain
providers to backup their data so that any domain provider going bankrupt
won't affect domains. However there was no mention of what procedures Google
Domains themselves have put in place to protect their customers in case their
customers get irreversibly banned somewhere within Google's vast empire.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19178757](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19178757)

If the answer is they keep your domains, like they do with Adsense revenue
when they ban accounts, then you should definitely be getting your .dev
through a different domain provider who Google cannot avoid cooperating with
because of ICANN rules they have to follow.

[https://www.searchenginejournal.com/adsense-
lawsuit/248135/](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/adsense-lawsuit/248135/)

~~~
babypuncher
For what reasons does Google actually ban accounts?

~~~
core-questions
Google owns Youtube, which bans people for any reason they feel like,
including people for whom it had become a full-time job with their channel
monetization paying the bills.

It is extremely unwise and very much against the founding spirit of the
Internet to allow one company this much control, especially one that has shown
itself to be censorious in the past.

~~~
all2
Wait, does a YT ban extend to all Google products? Does this lock someone out
of, say, webmaster tools?

~~~
aclelland
Not normally but they do ban your entire account if their bots believe you've
been very naughty.

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47278362](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47278362)

Despite the ban being due to a violation of YT terms of service they lost
their entire Google account. > "But because my Google account was terminated
as well I didn't have access to my email so I couldn't see what happened."

~~~
mixmastamyk
Now imagine you had a profitable business on Google Cloud and this happened.

~~~
yellowapple
There are even horror stories about personal accounts getting banned and the
ban subsequently propagating to the corporate GApps account of the violator's
employer, thus completely shutting down corporate email and document sharing.

------
mslev
Me: "Wow [myfirstname].dev is available! I gotta get it!"

Aaaaaaand its $11,500.

~~~
xienze
Try to register through Gandi. They give you options that decrease in price
all the way down to ~$16 -- that's the "get it when it GAs" price. If someone
scoops it up before you, you're refunded. Otherwise, it's yours.

I managed to get <lastname>.dev, and it's a somewhat common last name, for
$133.50 on the "GA" pricing. I expect someone will grab it before then. But if
not...

~~~
qnk
Nah, it says "Unavailable" on Gandi. It seems that somebody paid full price,
although it is not operative => mauricio.dev

~~~
CydeWeys
Unfortunately, 'mauricio' is on the global domain reserve list administered by
ICANN, so it cannot be registered on any ngTLD. I believe it's Mauritius in
another language?

~~~
qnk
Oh, interesting, yes this is "mauritius" in Spanish a not so common name. I
didn't know this, thank you for pointing it out. I guess that list is recent
as mauricio.com and mauricio.co belongs to regular people and are currently
working.

Do you happen to have a link to said list? A quick googling returned nothing
relevant for me.

~~~
jtuente
I believe item #3 on this page is relevant:

[https://www.icann.org/resources/country-territory-
names#rese...](https://www.icann.org/resources/country-territory-
names#reserved)

~~~
CydeWeys
Yeah that's it, it's Mauritius in Spanish apparently.

ICANN definitely went overboard on these required reservations, but of course
we have no choice but to comply.

------
marksomnian
There is one thing that annoys me about generic TLDs like .dev, .website,
.cloud, .network etc. For example, Salesforce have
[https://crm.dev](https://crm.dev) \- are they the only CRM in the world? Hell
no, but they're the biggest, so they can be the only one in the .dev space.
Same with workers.dev.

~~~
stanleydrew
What's your proposed alternative? That generic category names should be
disallowed within a TLD? Or that some public or community-driven version of a
for-profit service should control the generic names?

~~~
derefr
Maybe names that have obvious “generic” squatter value—i.e. names that (at the
time of their attempted purchase) describe entire verticals, rather than
uniquely identifying a business—should be put up for auction rather than being
first-come-first-served.

(That would also include names that describe a vertical that someone tried to
trademark into being the name of a business anyway: pets.com and the like. If
that trademark isn’t _already_ well known, then this is just an attempt to
end-run the auction system, rather than a valid claim.)

Given that TLDs can decide their own allocation policies, I’m surprised none
of them have tried this yet.

~~~
Klathmon
Well the .dev domains are going up in a "dutch auction" style.

The price starts off at an insane $11,500 per domain, and then slowly over the
course of 2 weeks goes down to $12 per domain, first come first serve.

It's a pretty good solution in my opinion to the problem of how to "fairly"
distribute domain names.

I want to pick up a few, but I'm going to wait until they are down to the
lowest tier as i'm pretty sure nobody is going to pay even $100 for them. And
if they do, well then they probably want it more than I do!

~~~
everdev
> The price starts off at an insane $11,500 per domain

It's only insane if no one wants to pay that much. I bet tons of companies are
willing to pay that for premium .dev domains.

------
burger_moon
Kinda weird that Google issued itself web.dev and opensource.dev

It feels like those would've been better suited for non-profit orgs

~~~
frou_dh
Only if you for some reason attribute gravitas to it.

This is just yet another scattershot TLD. It's about as consequential as
.ninja in the grand scheme of things.

------
mchannon
This landrush is different.

Try putting a one-character .dev domain in your cart (0.dev is available as of
now). It's not a lump sum plus $12/year. It's thousands every year after
registration.

In a way, I guess this is useful for deterring "domainers".

Even a 4-letter word or name .dev is hundreds of dollars a year. I wonder if
the annual fee will drop as the days go by or just the purchase price.

~~~
icebraining
They're called "premium domains". I think all new gTLDs have them.

------
OedipusRex
How did Google get in charge of this? Why did they get to set the price points
for registering these domains? ICANN really sold out for this one.

~~~
eugeniub
A couple years ago ICANN started letting companies buy customized TLDs through
an auction process. I'm not sure how much they paid, but for comparison,
Google tried buying .blog a while ago but was outbid by Automattic, who paid
$19 million.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11686086](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11686086)

~~~
OedipusRex
This is privatization of the web.

~~~
jrockway
It's not. You can make your own DNS server and sell records to anyone you
want. You just have to convince users to type in your address instead of
8.8.8.8.

~~~
vokep
Realistically, how could a project be setup around this?

I mean, how do we get everyday normal people to use it?

Its been attempted before (namecoin etc)...but maybe some advantage could be
given to make it more attractive.

~~~
i_cant_speel
The current state of things are OK enough that it's not worth it to normal
people to make the switch. If that time ever comes, people will do so.

------
snowwolf
Slack and Github were so worried about someone cybersquatting that they were
willing to pay $11,500 each to get those domains today? I guess that's the
point of the Dutch auction system, but still seems like a waste of money.

~~~
morpheuskafka
For Microsoft (which owns GitHub) that is a tiny expense, but if they couldn't
really afford it they could just file a dispute under UDRP.

~~~
reaperducer
But does the money come from Microsoft or from GitHub?

In a lot of the large companies I've worked, money is siloed from one
operating unit to the next. They would send bills between units and sometimes
even departments.

The larger the company, the more common this seemed. It's not one giant piggy
bank.

~~~
0xffff2
Does it really matter? Surely $11k is still a tiny amount for GitHub.

~~~
mixmastamyk
~One month salary for a senior dev.

~~~
fgonzag
Junior most likely

------
ravenstine
Do TLDs even matter? I'm working on building a professional blog, and although
a .dev TLD _seems_ appropriate, using a cheaper one like .co or .be, or even
.io seems functionally identical and a lot less costly. Paying hundreds or
thousands for .dev seems like paying for pure vanity.

Is it going to help people reach your site? I kinda doubt it. Will Google use
it to index your site differently? Maybe, but I dunno. I hope not, but it
would kind of make sense.

~~~
uniformlyrandom
.dev is only prohibitively expensive during the pre-sale. After Feb 28, there
will be no extra charge ($0 one-time fee).

~~~
michaelt
Unless it's a "premium domain" which has a separate pricing structure,
independent of the release phase, and renewal fees that stay higher forever.

Hence, right now kjaegrlkjnfvaf.dev is "$11,500 + $12/year" [0] while hn.dev
is "$11,500 + $720/year" [1]

So alex.dev and aj.dev will cost $720/year forever, tim.dev, james.dev and
emma.dev are $360/year, tony.dev and grace.dev are $180/year, olivia.dev and
harry.dev are $98/year, yusef.dev, oscar.dev and sanjay.dev are $12/year.

Maybe not "prohibitive" but a big premium for the Alexes among us!

[0]
[https://domains.google.com/m/registrar/search?searchTerm=kja...](https://domains.google.com/m/registrar/search?searchTerm=kjaegrlkjnfvaf.dev)
[1]
[https://domains.google.com/m/registrar/search?searchTerm=hn....](https://domains.google.com/m/registrar/search?searchTerm=hn.dev)

~~~
NelsonMinar
Thank you for explaining this; I don't see these high yearly priced domains
adequately disclosed anywhere. Google's marketing is all about how the
"premium" is a one time fee for early registration, do they explain the higher
yearly fee names anywhere?

------
ImJasonH
[https://google.dev/](https://google.dev/) says:

> There was no service found for the uri requested.

~~~
notafrog
Looks like they were in a hurry with the page title too:

> Error 404 (Not Found)!!1

~~~
toast0
That's an attempt at humor / adopting a jokey tone. Not an actual typo.

~~~
notafrog
Wasn't aware of that. It is cool when you look at it that way

------
ryanmarsh
I'd really like to see which .dev domains are getting registered at the higher
prices. Is there any way to see a feed of this data?

~~~
icebraining
In theory, you can get that here:
[https://dnpedia.com/tlds/daily.php](https://dnpedia.com/tlds/daily.php)
(write "dev" in the TLD column)

Doesn't seem to have those listed in the top article, though, not sure why.
Maybe it'll update later.

EDIT: The official source seems to be
[https://czds.icann.org/](https://czds.icann.org/)

~~~
CydeWeys
CZDS is a once-daily export. So the earliest you'd see information about
domains registered today would be tomorrow.

------
jgrahamc
Such as [https://workers.dev/](https://workers.dev/)

------
strictnein
> ...it requires HTTPS to connect to all .dev websites. This protects people
> who visit your site against ad malware and tracking injection by internet
> service providers

The latter is true (it protects against injection), but I'm not sure how the
former is. How would it protect against ad malware?

~~~
jerluc
My assumption from that sentence is that both "ad malware" and "ad tracking"
are injected by some ISPs somewhere between the client and the server. By
forcing HTTPS, you'd prevent some amount of this by ensuring the data in
transit from client-to-server-to-client is encrypted (and thus mostly tamper-
proof) using the .dev domain's public cert.

~~~
CydeWeys
Also commonly injected by malicious or compromised WiFi routers.

------
kowdermeister
Hmm, any idea why the list of countries are so limited?

[https://support.google.com/domains/answer/4639612?hl=en](https://support.google.com/domains/answer/4639612?hl=en)

~~~
CydeWeys
Google Domains is one of many registrars selling .dev domains. Feel free to
use a different registrar that offers support in your country.

~~~
kemyd
Prices for early access .dev domains in other providers are at least 2x
higher.

For example, using GoDaddy, you can buy .dev domain for 800$ instead of 350$
on Friday (4th stage of early access).

~~~
CydeWeys
Filter down to just ".dev EAP" here to see all registrars participating in
EAP: [https://www.registry.google/register-a-
domain/#!/](https://www.registry.google/register-a-domain/#!/)

And we have no control over registrar prices, or countries that any given
registrar operates in.

------
everdev
The example domains linked to in the announcement are all down for me:

[https://get.dev/](https://get.dev/)
[https://github.dev/](https://github.dev/)
[https://grow.dev/](https://grow.dev/)
[https://accessibility.dev/](https://accessibility.dev/)
[https://slack.dev/](https://slack.dev/)

etc.

~~~
ekc
Working for me; sounds like a DNS issue on your end.

~~~
everdev
Ah, fudge, yep.

I remember people complaining about the .dev tld for this reason. Many people
have it routed locally.

------
john88
What happens if there is a conflict between companies that have submitted a
trademark of a generic term to the Trademark Clearinghouse? (two companies
that have a trademark of the same generic name, but on a different field for
example) How is this settled?

------
denom
I sort of get the appeal of a '.dev' TLD, but I wish that google donated the
whole thing to those who were using it informally for local development.

That would have been a good gift to all the devs out there.

~~~
Twisol
The `.test` and `.localhost` TLDs are already reserved for such purposes:
[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2606](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2606)

~~~
jolmg
Interesting. Because my /etc/hosts file had the following as a default:

    
    
        127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
        ::1  localhost.localdomain localhost
    

I thought it was `.localdomain` that was reserved.

~~~
Twisol
I really thought so too! But I can't find any reference for it.

------
diek00
I checked out a few, the prices are excessive imo, $11,011.00

------
RileyJames
Damn, the only domain I want is premium. And renews for $720 per year.

I guess that miiight stop squatters, but I feel like it will result in a
squatter with deeper pockets.

------
malinens
This sucks.

We used .dev domain internally in dev/testing environments and one day we were
forced to switch domains because google bought it

~~~
dewey
That's your fault for using something that's a valid domain and not a reserved
one for exactly that use case decided on 20 years ago:

[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2606](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2606)

.test, .example, .invalid, .localhost

------
hartator
.dev meh. I would dig an .api tld.

------
bloopernova
No one has got "null.dev". I'm disappointed.

~~~
CydeWeys
I suspect it'll go soon, if not at the very top price tier.

------
tschellenbach
It didn't work, top domains were already gone at 09:00

~~~
kowdermeister
It certainly worked to stop me grabbing top domains.

------
jlarocco
I'm not familiar with all of the details of how domain registration works, but
will these always have to go through Google?

I'm interested in buying one, but not from them.

~~~
judge2020
Many other registrars, like Namecheap, Gandi, etc. also can register .dev

~~~
CydeWeys
The full list of participating registrars is here:
[https://www.registry.google/register-a-
domain/#!/](https://www.registry.google/register-a-domain/#!/)

------
sascha_sl
12000 a pop and filed under "small business".

Ok.

~~~
CraftThatBlock
Also as another commenter said, Trademark owners (GitHub, Slack, etc) could
get their domains earlier at a lower price.

~~~
sascha_sl
Which is funny because trademark owners tend to not be "small businesses".

~~~
CraftThatBlock
I agree, although this requirement of from ICANN, not Google themselves

------
lurker213
where is the men.dev domain? I see there is a women.dev...

------
iambvk
$98 a year? Are they serious? Do they think all developers live in the first
world?

~~~
icebraining
Where are you seeing that price? Maybe you found a "premium" domain, the base
rate seems to be (will be, after EAP) about $12/year.

~~~
iambvk
Google domains page says $98 a year after early-access.

~~~
icebraining
Doesn't it say "PREMIUM"? Here I'm seeing 12€/year:
[https://domains.google.com/m/registrar/search?searchTerm=ran...](https://domains.google.com/m/registrar/search?searchTerm=randomstring.dev&hl=en)

------
CedarHill
Stupid expensive for what really?

~~~
barbecue_sauce
They get progressively cheaper as we approach February 28. After that, I
believe registrations are free with a $12 maintenance cost.

~~~
CydeWeys
Minor correction, registrations are never free. Come 2019-02-28 16:00:00Z,
they will be available at the base price. Registrars set their own prices, so
depending on which registrar you're using, expect that to be around $12-20/yr
(including the initial year).

~~~
kickopotomus
Do you happen to have a source for the 16:00 UTC base price switch? I am not
seeing a specific time on any of the linked pages.

~~~
Arcuru
The schedule is documented here:
[https://domains.google/tld/dev/](https://domains.google/tld/dev/)

------
victor106
Would rather spend that money on validating a product idea or improving
customer experience.

