Not sure who changed the HN headline, but I appreciate the change. Especially since the concept in the headline is buried at the bottom of the post.

Post author is throwing a lot of sand at Google for a process that has (a) been around for, what, over a decade now and (b) works. The fact of the matter is this hosting provider was too open, several users of the provider used it to put up content intended to attack users, and as far as Google (or anyone else on the web is concerned) the TLD is where the buck stops for that kind of behavior. This is one of the reasons why you host user-generated content off your TLD, and several providers have gotten the memo; it is unfortunate statichost.eu had not yet.

I'm sorry this domain admin had to learn an industry lesson the hard way, but at least they won't forget it.