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Alphabet selling Google Domains assets to Squarespace

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Re: Alphabet selling Google Domains assets to Squarespace

#211
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe start looking. Squarespace charges more for domains (there's a comment thread in here about .com being more expensive).

Good thing I paid for a 10 year registration! Got some time to plan.

If you have the full 10 years remaining, you might not be able to transfer right now according to:

https://kb.porkbun.com/article/224-transfer-domain-from-goog...

    Since domains can only ever have a max of ten years registration at any given time, sometimes the registry won't allow domain transfers that already have nine years of registration.

Re: Alphabet selling Google Domains assets to Squarespace

#212
post #25

> In an unexpected announcement today, Google Domains is “winding down following a transition period,” (…) Google killing a product should no longer be a surprise to anyone. It’s the opposite of Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition: everybody expects it. https://killedbygoogle.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spanish_Inquisition_(Monty...

I still mourn the loss of Google Reader.

Please stop it.

I watched the recent developments to Twitter, Google and Reddit, and loved it all.

One way for self-hosted service to catch up is to wait for the big companies to mess up, and they're messed up very well at this moment.

Google previously changed their account expiration policy, and decided to lock users out of their usernames instead of allowing the old owner to re-active it, making the expiration permanently destructive for the user.

This effectively told their users that use of Google services is not "maintenance-free", you have to constantly engage with Google to keep it alive. And funny enough... maintenance costs is one of the reasons why people choose to abandoned their soft-host services.

Now the pendulum swings another way, it's great.

Re: Alphabet selling Google Domains assets to Squarespace

#213

To the various people saying they’ll transfer their domains away, why is this bad that they transfer to another registrar company? Is there something concerning about Squarespace?

Price and features. Squarespace charges $20/year for a .com vs $12 on google and less than that elsewhere.

I haven’t used squarespace but I also imagine they don’t have as much of a power-user appeal, given that DNS is not their main product.

Re: Alphabet selling Google Domains assets to Squarespace

#215
post #191

Google simply has no incentive to serve the customer who uses them for domain management. They make so much money from ads that they're far more concerned about their ad revenue than they are about money from paying customers.

True, but then why even go into the business? Could they not model out that this would never be a giant revenue stream and customers all the grief.

Re: Alphabet selling Google Domains assets to Squarespace

#216

Me with 100+ domains with Google: chuckles I'm in danger! I should have known. I started a transition for most of my stuff to cloudflare anyway. I kind of figured this would come eventually.

I worked for Squarespace 2010-2012 and the focus from management was mainly on keeping customers happy. It's not like it's ad focused and there's a need to extract maximum value from the userbase. It's possible that's changed in the last decade but Anthony (CEO) was really into having a premium product and a quick glance at the about page shows that most of the senior leadership hasn't changed so I don't see why they'd change direction.

Re: Alphabet selling Google Domains assets to Squarespace

#218

I guess we know Google isn’t serious about Google Cloud any longer… I feel like this product is table stakes for a cloud. Does this mark a new transition for google leadership? Will google start to sell their unwanted businesses instead of just killing them?

Google's enterprise-grade DNS is "Google Cloud DNS" [1]. It's not going anywhere. Google Domains is a consumer-grade product, in the sense that it is lacking most of the features (access control, bulk management) that a large company needs, though it was not lacking in stability / availability. And you could easily hook Google Domains up to Google Workspace to light up email for a small business. Feels like a good fi…

As you say, I found google domains + google workspace was enough for my needs.

I am shocked they've sold to squarespace -- squarespace seems to have (from looking at their website) no interest, or experience, in just DNS hosting. Their website is all about hosting, I have my own hosting.

I guess they must be planning (or already have, hidden somewhere) a similar service to google domains, but I'm certainly not risking my domains on that assumption.

Re: Alphabet selling Google Domains assets to Squarespace

#219
So I have a Google Workspace attached to my domain. How will this work when the domain is managed by another company? When I move my domains off Squarespace, how will my Workspace work? I’m confused if they are saying my Workspace services will migrate to Squarespace too?

> Squarespace will also provide billing and support services to Google Workspace customers

I have to admit, I’m at a total loss, this makes zero sense.

Re: Alphabet selling Google Domains assets to Squarespace

#220

This may be the last straw for me trusting Google. I say this as a paying Google photos user and owner of a pixel 6. If they kill THIS nothing is off the table. Time to find alternatives and even switch phones. No more all-in-ones platforms. For a solid alternative I recommend Porkbun. They do just domains and nothing else, with a clean no bullshit UI.

Any good alternatives to Google Photos?
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