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Google Domains blocking all Gitbook URLS: post-mortem

blog.gitbook.com

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Re: Google Domains blocking all Gitbook URLS: post-mortem

#141

Post by throw_m239339 »

dundercoder wrote: post #64

This mirrors my experience with google support, even as a paying gsuite customer. I lost a YouTube channel and wasn’t given any option to restore it. Their advice was to just re upload all the content and forget about view counts and old links that would no longer work.

Same, and don't get me started on Ad-sense, kicked out by Google who claimed I was clicking on my own ads?!? They owe me tons on money, they know it because they sent me a stupid voucher at my home address to spend it on double-click, LOL... it was 14 years ago.

Since then every-time I have the opportunity I strongly oppose any business I work with to move to any Google cloud service and I was pretty convincing so far in large corporations, and I will continue to do so.

Re: Google Domains blocking all Gitbook URLS: post-mortem

#142

Post by acituan »

mbreese wrote: post #114

Aside from the Google domain issue (which is obviously a problem) -- why on earth would GitBook be hosting user-generated content under their corporate gitbook.com domain? The registrar issue is one problem here -- but I don't see this addressed in their post-mortem. I thought this was a well-known issue. You don't host user-generated content on the same domain that handles your corporate email. Because things like t…

Does it really make it less of a problem if they had a separate domain for corporate and it was only the user content going down? Serving user content can as well be part of a service’s core product and registrar induced downtime is a big enough problem.

Building and running anti-abuse tech works in proportion to the money put in. Can a small player really compete with Google’s anti-abuse investments? No. Save for a couple of exceptions, this means Google could always find abusive user content in its clients’ domains that the clients themselves couldn’t catch. I am not suggesting small players should be able to freeride Google’s anti-abuse capabilities, but if leads to enforcement and downtime of this sort, there needs to be a better protocol for the client to be able to respond or it paints a very anti-competitive picture.

Re: Google Domains blocking all Gitbook URLS: post-mortem

#143

Post by notriddle »

abc-xyz wrote: post #27
nicoburns wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Namecheap have been solid for me for several years now.

Namecheap dumping personal info without informing their customer ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18063667 ), Namecheap threatening to shut down a site if the customer doesn’t delete two images posted there within 24 hours ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14139288 )

> Namecheap threatening to shut down a site if the customer doesn’t delete two images posted there within 24 hours

Better than what Google Domains did to Gitbook.

Re: Google Domains blocking all Gitbook URLS: post-mortem

#144

Post by toast0 »

michaelt wrote: post #24
CameronNemo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have examples?

According to whois, google.com, amazon.com, github.com, microsoft.com, netflix.com, reddit.com, baidu.com, youtube.com, twitch.tv and wikipedia.org all use MarkMonitor [1] apple.com, twitter.com and ocado.com use CSC Corporate Domains [2] I have no idea what such services charge, but they're all "call for pricing" and none of those companies would blink at spending $10k/year on their domains. Not every well known bra…

At my last job, we called MarkMonitor after NetworkSolutions' lack of admin security got our domain hijacked. I don't remeber the prices exactly, and I'm sure they've changed, but from what I recall, the per domain year prices were about 10x normal prices, like $100/year for .com, but they also had a mininum annual spend of I think $10k/year; to get the 'super lock' domain service was about $1000/year available on a small selection of TLDs. They were also pretty dismissive on the first call until they looked us up and you could hear the dollar signs spinning in their eyes. They were very easy to work with and professional after that though. This was while they were owned by Thompson-Reuters, they've since been sold to private equity.

Re: Google Domains blocking all Gitbook URLS: post-mortem

#145

Post by notriddle »

_jal wrote: post #109

You know, this is interesting. Google is taking something close to an editorial stance here - it is clear that they take action against their customers based on content on their sites. Some might consider that sites with controversial content who use Google as their registrar and not taken down are considered reviewed-and-OK by Google. Others might start pressuring Google to expand the nature of content they find una…

Phishing is not "controversial." It's illegal, and it undermines the principle of informed consent that meaningful freedom requires. Even if Google isn't legally obligated to take down phishing domains, I refuse to be so anal as to complain about it. It is everybody's job to make the internet safe and usable.

Too bad Google does a terrible job of it. No way am I signing up for a Google Domain in the future.

Re: Google Domains blocking all Gitbook URLS: post-mortem

#146

Post by toast0 »

boromi wrote: post #128
m0xte wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

G Suite is a shit show. Had major problems with a trial. Firstly it would just redirect back to the admin console if I hit gmail. Support couldn’t fix it. Also you can’t give anyone access to YouTube (!) for 60 days after signing up or paying $30 in credit. Which is no good because when you pay them £30 fuck all happens. And again support were useless. Happy O365 customer now. And I’ve used support which was excellen…

What's O365. Honestly I've tried everything and can't find any support pages. In order to get support you need to login to admin console on G Suite, well how the heck am I supposed to do that if I can't login to begin with? This is the generic https://imgur.com/a/lgRby50 page I get. It's been almost a week and a half, more than 5 business days, and I haven't heard back from my request to restore my account. The probl…

I don't know if it would work these days, but I'd go down to their offices with a sign saying "I need help with my account" and march in front of their office. Be calm and civil and maybe you'll get some where. Or maybe there's a phone number on your credit card bill / that you can get from your credit card charges.

Re: Google Domains blocking all Gitbook URLS: post-mortem

#147

Post by sozy777 »

cirno wrote: post #129
SamyPesse wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've just published a postmortem: https://blog.gitbook.com/tech/post-mortems/06-20-gitbook-dom... let us know if you have any questions!

I'm curious how you feel about CloudFlare as a registrar not allowing GitBook to use an external root nameserver. Being forcibly stuck on CloudFlare's own nameservers only sounds very nefarious, and isn't a limitation I've ever heard of with any other registrar. For instance, it would break my tooling that uses my host's APIs to control DNS records through their nameserver. I'd be very appreciative if eastdakota or j…

Exactly, huge red flag. Google domains it's risky because they can ban your entire Google account including personal Gmail and any linked business ones. Can be pretty bad I'd say.

Re: Google Domains blocking all Gitbook URLS: post-mortem

#148

Post by techntoke »

lmm wrote: post #122
walrus01 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost as if, while the laws and policies and regulations are supposed to be the same for all, giant entities with huge amounts of money and power behind them are held to a different standard than everyone else. I can't say I'm surprised.

There's a parade of apologists who will quickly pop up to say that a private company platform should not be held to any free speech standard since they're not a government, never mind how much power they wield in practice.

What about when it is the government taking down a domain for hosting illegal or copyrighted content? What happens when you give the government enough power to take down a domain for political dissent? The problem you mention isn't with Google, it is with how TLDs and domain registrars work in the first place.

Re: Google Domains blocking all Gitbook URLS: post-mortem

#149

Post by techntoke »

wolco wrote: post #108

Never use google as a registrar. Support someone else. The internet is bigger than google.

Support who? Government has power to take down any domain, especially TLDs and registrars in the US. People should be supporting decentralized DNS and name servers if they want to be safe from takedowns.

Re: Google Domains blocking all Gitbook URLS: post-mortem

#150

Post by tzs »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #34
OzzyB wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apart from the most obvious examples, I would also consider Cloudflare's new registry service. It's cheap, at-cost, and they support a lot of the new TLDs like .io which is also a lot cheaper.

> It's cheap, at-cost That to me is a downside since that means that that is not a core part of their business. Financially, it makes no difference to them if I use their service or not. I would rather pay a little extra to a company that has domain registration as a core part of their business and actually makes a profit from me. And domain names are cheap. Even if you pay twice as much as the cheapest service, it s…

How about mixing the two? Buy your domain at the cheapest registrar you can find. Pay for 9 years. Then as soon as you can transfer to some registrar you have more long term confidence in. You might have to purchase another year there to do this.

Net result: You get the domain at your preferred registrar, but you get 90% of the savings you would have got if you had it at the cheap register.

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