Google Domains shutting down, assets sold and being migrated to Squarespace

cjerrington@kbin.social to Technology@kbin.social – 130 points – Google Domains shutting down, assets sold and being migrated to Squarespace
9to5google.com

Google Domains is "winding down following a transition period," with Squarespace taking over the business and assets...

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Google try not to kill their services challenge(impossible)

It might be more efficient to list Google projects that haven't shut down.

this is why is stopped using google, before they turned evil. Now I don't use them because they're an evil af company.

How is this evil? Google is selling off a portion of their business that is probably not profitable for them. Evil would be ruining the service for the sake of profits. Would shutting it down be less evil?

If you don't like Squarespace, then aren't they the evil ones in this scenario?

Maybe you misread. aeternum gave two reasons for not "using Google": (1) they often shut down services—his/her original reason—and (2) being "evil", an additional reason and possibly a reference to Google's "Don't be evil" motto which is now used only in a very weak context at the end of their Code of Conduct.

I am currently using a Google phone lol, I know I probably shouldn't but its worth it for me

Another one to the Google Graveyard. It’s crazy how even paid, profitable services can be tossed away by them. This has to be the widest reaching service they have deprecated. At least they are moving people over to SquareSpace, but still, this has to be a widely unpopular move here.

I just registered like 6 domains with them this year. What a PITA.

How long can they keep doing this before people stop trusting Google to support any new service? At some point it's like, why bother engaging with their products if you know they have limited, unpredictable shelf life?

@Cylusthevirus

@cjerrington

Funny thing is that that’s one of the reasons they axe many projects - it’s a viscous cycle

I was talking to a friend currently working for Waymo (an Alphabet subsidiary) about this issue and he mentioned that there's a strong incentive to launch products because that can be used to lobby for promotions and raises, but very little incentive to support them long term unless it's Gmail or one of the other flagships.

If everyone wants to make stuff and nobody wants to run or improve stuff, it makes sense that this would happen. It just seems like such a relatively easy issue to fix.

What won’t Google kill??!?!?

Transferring domains on your own is a process…. Wonder how much harder it will be moving registration and user accounts, dns, Whois, name servers, etc. hopefully it’s easier for the users too and don’t get stuck in migration limbo.

Everyone don't trust Squarespace, they will make you pay $20 just to own the domain, google is only $12. Do not let your domain go to them.

This is bad news, I appreciated the easy integration with Google Cloud Platform and other Google services via Google Domains. It was the one place I felt like buying a domain name was safe.

Any recommendations on a registrar?

namecheap has been good

I've been a happy customer since one of the go daddy migrations years ago but is it just me or has the app and mobile web interface gotten a lot worse recently? The place stays true to its name for the most part to me though. Gotten some good deals on some dumb domains.

Does name cheap have free email aliases, like Google Domains? That's one of the main features I use.

I also use the website forwarding (redirecting), but that's not as important for me.

Edit: it looks like both are supported by name cheap, so that's probably what I'll migrate to.

I like cloudflare. They dont do the renewal pricing bs a lot do.

I was scrolling through these comments to see if anyone said anything about Cloudflare. Glad to see there's a few positives already posted. Happy with them overall?

I've been relying more and more on cloudflare for their services but most of the free ones I'm using are starting to make me question their privacies and the potential for them to be a single point of failure.

Yes, I use them for my dns even for my google domain. The interface is good and they support dynamic ip addresses, too.
I'm sure like a lot of these giant enterprise providers, us little people don't really cost too much and we have the chance to recommend them at work.

I’ve been happy with Cloudflare’s registrar service, plus it keeps all my DNS stuff in one place.

I've been using porkbun for several years, no complaints.

Aws Route 53, but I got all my stuff in aws so I find it convenient.

Bruh I just registered a domain with Google Domains 2 months ago.

I only got it done through Google Domains because I've heard the ease of setting it up and set it up and forget about it with Netlify (since I have no experience whatsoever with website administration procedures)... how does Squarespace compare? Should I look for other services?

Bruh.

Anyone know if squarespace is likely to jack up the price? I quite like my domain and was planning on spinning up a kbin instance with it

They've got to cover their marketing budget somehow...

You can transfer your domain if you act fast, it takes a few days. You may have to pay again on the new registrar though.

You pay for the transfer basically and keep the current registration time + 1 year. But ICANN only allows transfers within certain time windows of age of the domain, before/after registration, and such as well... but could be easier now to get out of Google and locked into a mess later.

Bah! i actually paid to move a couple of mine TO google domains like 6 months ago to get them off of another site so they would be all in one place. So much for that. Its too bad, i liked Google DOmains. Free forwards to Gmails and easy to edit DNS records.

My google domain is registered through enom, wonder why the wouldn't transfer it there? Also they say google domains launched in 2014, but I've definitely had mine since 2010.

edit: goggle -> google

Given the boom of .app and .dev gTLDs, this is a massive win for Squarespace if the registry side is included in the deal.

Cloudflare is still the best domain registrar that I’ve worked with. Doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

I’ve never managed a domain with square space without hosting. Wonder if I should transfer my domains to another registrar.

Are they closing Google Sites also? Why get rid of domains and keep sites?

I just re-read the article and it actually says your domain will be owned by squarespace. I hope not.

and your domain will be owned and, after a transition period, managed by Squarespace.

Welp, time to move registrations over to Cloudflare. I'm not going to give my money to Squaspace for this.

And my stubbornness to avoid google services pays off yet again. Quick question: Now that gandi is circling the shitter, which DNS provider do you recommend? Porkbun is nice but is us based. IXF or whatever the EU one people recommend is known to hand out private information upon request (not court order).

Thanks! Would have been nice to get an email from Google about it. I have a website on Squarespace (recently moved over from Wix). Since them people are getting my money anyway, should I just let them have ny domain too or move to something else? The comments here like Cloudflare (need to check prices, I currently pay 12 bucks a year).

This. Being a customer and learning about it through 9/5 and not an official communication kinda sucks.

That does present a poor user experience, but also seems like a quick decision too.

I wonder how much this is going to break. I have a dynamic DNS set up with them, I can't imagine it being a seamless transition.

Thankfully my autorenewal happened at the end of May (May 29th). Folks, you have 30 days from the date of an auto-renewal to cancel and get a refund.

Right as I was looking at them yesterday to buy a domain for a Lemmy instance. Glad I didn't bother going through with it.

I had a note in my phone to move to google domains in about 8 months. Guess that isn't happening.

This is a weird move, I guess not worth the small amount they make. The only provider I've never had issues with so far is Namecheap. I see a lot of people recommending Cloud flare here, so I may try them out for my ones on Google.

I use namecheap. They're mostly fine, but they do not make it easy to support free SSL certs, and their shared hosting is not a particularly good deal, but it's still cheap enough for one site that I haven't investigated thoroughly. I haven't changed my registrar, but I did send my DNS over to Cloudflare due to the SSL issue.

I just transferred my Google domains to Cloudflare. Super easy and good interface, like everything else Cloudflare. Plus it's cheaper!

I use namecheap for the registration and Cloudflare for the DNS. Pretty easy setup and support as well. The SSL is great as I get a free SSL wildcard and can use that for other origin and edge certificates as well.