Google sells its domain registration business. In a surprising announcement today, website building platform Squarespace (NYSE: SQSP) announced that it’s buying Google Domains, Google’s domain name registrar. The purchase price is $180 million, and JPMorgan Chase Bank is providing financing for part of the purchase. Google launched its domain registrar in 2014, originally calling it […]
  • 𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏@lemmy.one
    17·
    2 years ago

    This is a surprising move by Google, one would think there would be no benefit them selling the domains business?

    Squarespace hopes to convert some of these people into customers of its site building and other tools

    No thanks

    Squarespace will honor Google Domains renewal prices for current customers for at least 12 months

    This quote has me slightly worried, especially considering some Google domains already cost almost triple of a regular ‘.com’

  • hoyon@programming.dev
    15·
    2 years ago

    They probably wanted to add Google domains to their ever growing product graveyard so I guess selling it is better than forcing everyone to fix their DNS.

    Sucks though. Was really easy to use and for the most part just worked.

  • pitninja@lemmy.pit.ninja
    12·
    2 years ago

    Lol, they’re 100% going to lose me as a customer. The only reason I used them as a registrar was because it was quick and easy to integrate into Google Workspaces and manage everything like DNS from one site. This is honestly a pretty annoying move.

      • Justin@lemmy.loutsenhizer.com
        1·
        2 years ago

        Just looked at their offering, it looks promising. They also have email forwarding with catch-all which will be useful for people relying on that with Google domains

        • HReflex@yiffit.net
          1·
          2 years ago

          Welp just transfered my domains and it was super easy. I’m already using Tutanota for my email and clouflare for DNS so I don’t have to change anything it seems. Just went to the transfer website, unlocked the domains on Google, got a transfer pin, gave it to cloudflare, paid, verified the transfer via emails from google, and done

  • Faceman🇦🇺@discuss.tchncs.de
    7·
    2 years ago

    What the heck? that’s an unexpected one.

    Guess I’ll be looking at migrating my domains within the next 12 months, I don’t really like the way squarespace runs their business. I also sincerely hope this doesn’t affect gmail aliasing in any way, I rely on that as my main email address.

  • bird@beehaw.org
    5·
    2 years ago

    I’m happy with Porkbun as my domains’ registrar. 🙅🏼‍♀️ Cool for Squarespace, I guess.

  • Naatan@lemmy.one
    3·
    2 years ago

    Aw damn… I really like how bare basic their interface is and how they’re not constantly trying to upsell me shit I don’t need. Anyone have any good recommendations for alternatives that fit this bill? Google is just giving me the worst possible options.

  • 🇺🇦 seirim @lemmy.pro
    3·
    2 years ago

    Wow that’s interesting. For me as a consumer that would negate the value of the registrar - I would probably be wrong, but as a consumer maybe would have assumed that domains bought there have some easier integration into the Google ecosystem, with some convenience benefit even if small.

    Will they still? I don’t use Squarespace (but a lot of people must be, for them to have that much pull, damn) but would they still have such benefit? I guess the benefit is Squarespace integration.

    This includes Google’s special TLDs they own and administer? Article didn’t say.

    • VulcanSphere@kbin.social
      2·
      2 years ago

      This includes Google’s special TLDs they own and administer?

      That would be huge, especially with how .dev is booming now.

  • Yoru_Sulfur@lemmy.davidbuckley.ca
    2·
    2 years ago

    Huh, that’s weird. You would think that business had pretty good returns, given that registrars have famously high markup when selling domains.

    • jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de
      3·
      2 years ago

      It happens all the time. Bigger companies often decide that one of their products is not profitable enough or doesn’t fit their overall strategy and then the options are to either close the service (which is what Google is famous for), spin it off as a new business if it’s profitable enough, or try to see if someone is willing to buy that business unit (which is what happened to most of IBM for example).

  • Red@reddthat.com
    1·
    2 years ago

    That’s one way to kill a product! 😂

    My guess is that they tried to monetise it but couldn’t figure out a good way. So made some good money off it.

  • Stumblinbear@pawb.social
    1·
    2 years ago

    Well fuck me I guess. I only used this due to the ease of access and nice UI. Anyone know of better alternatives?