Google Domains, a domain registration service

[Joseph Green]

From Google Domains:

Every domain you buy or transfer to Google will include helpful features to make getting online easy and managing your domains simple.

Here’s what you get

• No additional cost for private registration
• Branded emails
• Easy domain forwarding
• Customizable sub-domains
• Fast, secure and reliable Internet infrastructure with Google
• Simple domain management tools
• Easy integration with top website builders
• New domain endings
• Support

Reference: http://domains.google.com/about/

Is anyone participating in this invite-only beta?

What do you think of it so far?

It looks like Google is going to become a major player in the domain industry very soon. This will be great for industry awareness.

 

[Charles Sweeney]

Do we need another registrar to add to the thousands of existing ones? For me it doesn't mean much as they are charging similar money to GoDaddy who I currently use, so no reason for me to use them.

Plus I prefer companies to stick to what they are good at. I use Google for searching the web and GoDaddy for registering names, not the other way around!

 

[ezcoms]

It is worth a try. Hopefully they won't manipulate us to buy a "domain discount club" like Godaddy does.

 

[NameOmnia]

Yes..I would be happy to be invited and give it a try..I am also pretty sure those names will rank pretty well...

 

[Keral_Patel]

Asked for an invite Lets see what happens

 

[enlytend]

I don't think they're looking to become a player in the domain industry as much as they're trying to provide "start to finish" solutions for SMB's. Domain, hosting and site (they've already partnered with shopify, weebly, wix and squarespace), Google MyBusiness, Adwords .

Here's Google's announcement: - note the focus on Small Business. They want to get them from the beginning - recurring fees,upsell, cross-sell, etc.

I doubt registering through them will HELP you rank well. Might give them easier access to data which could hurt you.

There's another thread on this topic in Industry News -
https://www.namepros.com/threads/google-going-to-sell-domains.826655/

 

[Jeeps]

Doesn't Google have a big enough piece of the internet pie already? I think I'm going to pass...

 

[NameOmnia]

At the end, I think, it all comes down to the service you receive, the ease of use and the benefits...

 

[tomcarl]

Google will eventually takeover the world, and they're starting with the Internet which is step #1.

They know our thoughts, our internet browsing, they read our emails, process our payments to know what we buy, when we buy it, they know patterns/trends of mass populations at any given time. They'll be literally sharing our vision and sight with Google glass. Watching us through the webcams built into our tablets.

They will soon take a stake in the video-game and movie industry, develop GoogleAuctions to put eBay out of business (that would be a good thing)

We will soon be eating GoogleLoops cereal with with a glass of diet GSoda before we leave to work in our Gmobile because you gotta' pay that mortgage to GoogleBanking.

It's the beginning of the United States of Google.

 

[TheFifty9Sound]

If they're offering free email with your domain I'm all about this. I'd much rather host my domain with Google and pay $12 a year than have to pay $50 per year to use Google Apps.

 

[Joseph Green]

If they're offering free email with your domain I'm all about this. I'd much rather host my domain with Google and pay $12 a year than have to pay $50 per year to use Google Apps.

Great point. It's a natural fit for Google Apps: every business should have a domain and every business should be using Google Apps to improve their workflow and productivity.

 

[buyselldoms]

I have to be honest these geeky invite-only things are a turn off.

Developing... yes, gaming... yes ... but a product for business?! Nooooooooooo

Google keeps most of its products in beta for huge extended amounts of time. The concept of an invite-system only is pathetic... Google, set a date for each market, then have a release date... you have the resources to make it work, but rarely do make it work.

I wont be registering through Google, however, I am glad the announcement wasn't facebook.

Google frustrates me. If it wants to be the KING of the internet... have a social network (Google Plus doesn't really cut it, more of a backend for certain search features and google places listings), have an auction website (we all hate ebay... which I hear makes most its revenue from paypal and adverts on ebay than it does on end fees and listing fees) etc ...

For me it will just become another shelved product. Google could easily offer $1 domains to tempt people, but this isn't good for their share price. Doesn't excite their investors. At $12 I don't think their product is significantly going to be in demand. Their cloud hosting services are amongst average... there are much worse, but are many better.

Its sadly a world of little innovation, superbrands like Apple, Google and Facebook are starting to kill everything off, destroy competition, slow the release of new technology, patent sweeping, buy up companies without knowing how to best push their products forward, patent wide range of ideas locking out the market to new innovators etc.

Anyone remember when the Apple iphone etc. were cutting edge and not just small slow steps of improvement from one to the next? Anyone remember myspace which despite being awful was solely a social networking website and not a brand trying to buy up everything like facebook is? Anyone remember early search engines and their death when Google entered the scene?! Rant over.

 

[forge]

I wont be registering through Google, however, I am glad the announcement wasn't facebook.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@000000oooooooooooo

 

[DomainVP]

They want control of your online real estate.

For them not to give any SERP benefit for people using their services would be very un-Google like. They may say that now, but down the road I'm sure we will notice a significant preference to Google hosted domains.

There is a sea-change brewing though, don't rule Bing out. It sounds absurd, but from what I have been seeing on the webs Apple is not thrilled w/ their Google search contract and Bing has a lot to offer since they are VERY flexible.

I think we all know the nature of the beasts; Apple wants to in-house everything, Bing wants to be Google, and Google wants to rule everything.

I wouldn't be shocked if Apple negotiated a fantastic deal with Bing, cutting Google out of the default of Apple and increasing their profits. Leaving Google to do what Google does best, require mandatory use of their products to rank well.

On another note, Google clearly sees the value in the 'passive income' that is domaining. Yes this all takes time, research, and money to own good names; but if they adopt a GoDaddy model they will make huge profit margins from domain resale and auctions.

A part of me thinks that this was the endgame for the whole gTLD program; to increase the value of the already valuable domains by flooding the market with junk domains, while still making a profit on the junk domains. The good names get inflated at no consequence to the registrar.

Meanwhile gTLD buyers and gTLD registries take a bath on the litany of junk names and astronomical application fees; ICANN and big registries win, always follow the money.

Google is smart [thank you captain obvious] it's why they are starting this now, they too know what's about to occur in the domain industry.

Also domain awareness is increasing, a year ago I saw 40-50 bidders for premium, single word, high comp, high SV .COM's... and now domains like Taser.com have 230+ bidders on NameJet.

It's a good time to own good names, and Google want's your names and want's you to die and forget to register them so the can make a profit on auction resale.

My 2 cents. Cheers!

 

[enlytend]

They want control of your online real estate.

For them not to give any SERP benefit for people using their services would be very un-Google like. They may say that now, but down the road I'm sure we will notice a significant preference to Google hosted domains.

I agree about them controlling online real-estate, but I disagree that registrants will get a SERP benefit. For one thing, if the SEO community suspects any funny business of that sort, there will be experiments and if they get caught they open themselves up to big anti-trust / anti-competition issues.

Besides they don't have to. What would they have to gain from it? They already take up most of the "above the fold" page real-estate with their own properties or those of their advertisers. Youtube is the only video source they ever feature on page 1. Their rankings have changed over the years from being a fairly unbiased sampling to featuring what benefits their own bottom line.

They have nothing to gain from boosting rankings of their registrant's sites. I'm sure Google MyBusiness listings (which is replacing Google Places / Plus / Maps for business) is going to take up plenty of space on the first page, as did its predecessors, so people who participate in that and optimize for it will be better off than those who don't. For local searches, it's been a LONG time since a domain like "PodunkPlumber.tld" was the way to show up at the top of the page - more likely to be found below a 7 pack or 10-pack of google local listings, if that.

They can already rank anyone wherever they want for whatever reason. Don't need to be a domain registrar to do that.

Most likely goals behind them offering this are data grabs and Adwords upsells. Adwords is their cash cow.

Google will eventually takeover the world, and they're starting with the Internet which is step #1.

They know our thoughts, our internet browsing, they read our emails, process our payments to know what we buy, when we buy it, they know patterns/trends of mass populations at any given time. They'll be literally sharing our vision and sight with Google glass. Watching us through the webcams built into our tablets..

The answer is simple:

Stop giving them your data!

Everything you do through their services gives them more data.

Don't use gmail, don't use Google apps, don't use chrome, don't use Plus, don't use Google Analytics, don't browse while you're logged in to Google, and don't register your domains with them.

If they're offering free email with your domain I'm all about this. I'd much rather host my domain with Google and pay $12 a year than have to pay $50 per year to use Google Apps.

There are free email services you can use with your own domain, like Zoho. Edit your DNS at your registrar and point your MX record to one of these mail servers. Or take one of your domains, get cheap hosting somewhere and just use it for mail.

 

[TheFifty9Sound]

I like Gmail. And Google can read my emails all they like. It's mostly just pictures of cats anyway..

 

[Joseph Green]

I don't think they're looking to become a player in the domain industry as much as they're trying to provide "start to finish" solutions for SMB's.

I agree, but I also believe that Google Domains will be a leading force behind every person eventually owning a domain name. Google will make it simple and bring it to the masses. That has prosperous implications for our entire industry.

I doubt registering through them will HELP you rank well. Might give them easier access to data which could hurt you.

Access to data that might hurt us? What do you mean? Could you give an example?

 

[buyselldoms]

Does anyone know what took Google so long to get into domain names? Would have been a more natural route than getting involved with smartphones, google glass and self-driving cars.

Will it be a simple domain registrar or is the intention of SME domain management and brand protection (in particular but also including blue chips) displacing the likes of MarkMonitor? Obviously including the additional bundle features of internet connection services (in the US), cloud hosting and adwords marketing vouchers.

Many consider Godaddy and Co to be very worried but I think companies like MarkMonitor (who Google, Apple and Microsoft to name a few currently use) will equally be worried. The question would be whether, if this was more than a domain registration service, would Google be abusing their position for anti-competitive practices? We will have to wait a few years to see.

 

[buyselldoms]

I like Gmail. And Google can read my emails all they like. It's mostly just pictures of cats anyway..

Don't be so certain. For one website I have that gets around 120,000 uniques per month... When I switched from my own domain name to a gmail for Adsense, the flattery seemed to increase the revenue by about 14% in the next month - perhaps a coincidence - what was more shocking for me personally... was when I decided to use Google Analytics... I held off sharing this data with Google by using rival services which I find are better... revenue dropped almost half! around 39% fall! 47% initially.

Google seemed to determine my traffic wasn't so lovely and the CPC rates fell. Advert clicks are still around the same on average - there are no incentives for visitors to click and no false traffic programmes etc participated in - this would obviously get the account terminated. At first I had to weigh up whether this was a seasonal issue. Five and a half months later this isn't the case.

On another website I have it doesn't seem to matter about peaks in unique visitors or marketing efforts - Google always pays around the same amount, give or take about £80 either side. This has been like this for over 18 months. This is a much smaller website than the one above but at the same time hardly tiny both in pages of unique quality content and the number of visitors. Its good for cashflow as I am seemed to be guaranteed at least a certain amount each month.. but I can't help feeling that Google might be making a mint at my website's expense and how it might be better to remove the adverts on that site altogether. The only problem is whether it has a knock on effect with the other one.

Of course perhaps the growing online advertising market is not so favourable to the users of my websites and the advertisers all raking in their spend, and all this is a mere coincidence... or perhaps giving Google too much information can be a bad thing? What I didn't understand was Google can get visitor stats from their adverts displayed on my website anyhow and those who have blocked adverts are almost just as likely to ban tracking services like analytics too.

 

[Joseph Green]

From the presentation:

• Google cares deeply about domain names.
  
• The Internet needs an auto-linking standard. Google products suffer from a lack of conformity:
• DomainTest.[gTLD] works for most new gTLDs. Example: domaintest.foo
• Google plans to add features and services on top of their new gTLDs, like GitHub meets domains with .foo for developers.
• Google plans to create restrictive new gTLDs, like .esq for board-certified lawyers.

 

[toptek]

Access to data that might hurt us? What do you mean? Could you give an example?

The Nazis used phone records to round people up and kill them. There will be another World War one day, and they will use Google and NSA information to round people up.