Google Domains
google.com
google.com
It turns out they don't let you do that. "Free trial" means 30 days free, then it's Apps for Business or no Apps at all.
I felt (and, to some extent, still feel) extorted by that. The customer service experience was extremely dissatisfying. So, will I eventually use Google Domains? Probably. I just won't depend on it without a failsafe - which is what I should have done since the beginning.
Similarly, if you have Apps for Business like we do, you don't get to see the history of your support cases - that's in the Google Enterprise Support Centre, which becomes available when your user count reaches 100. They did enable it when I asked for it, but it's just very odd that you can have a paid service like this, yet not see your case history unless you're 'big enough'. I don't understand why the case history triggers on '100 users' rather than 'is paying us money'.
Overall GApps is nice... but there are a lot of rough edges and corner cases.
Would you rather deal with Google as opposed to Namecheap? A great company with superb support that specializes in nothing but domain names and dedicated hosting?
I wouldn't.
People have been asking for, what, five years now?
Perhaps that has changed.
Based on pricing ($9.99/.com) and a growing irritation with GoDaddy, I finally moved my domains to Dynadot:
They have a (custom) 2FA app and 2FA SMS. BTW this friend referral https://www.dynadot.com/?s9N6j7d9G8B07i73 gives you & me $5 after purchase.
If your registrar currently accepts DS records, please
send an email with subject "DNSSEC REGISTRAR UPDATE"
and body containing company name, country location, URL,
what TLDs you accept DS records for, whether your Web
interface supports DS records, whether you provide
DNSSEC signing services to dnssec@icann.org and the
Security team will add your registrar to this DNSSEC
page.DNSSEC is an important trust root that can be used to pin certificates in addition to PKIX (CAs), or, in some practical cases (such as mailservers), instead of them.
Are you still running Telnet?
FWIW, I use the Firefox addon "DNSSEC Validator" (also does DANE) - https://www.dnssec-validator.cz/ - So if somebody managed to MITM my connection and insert a different, but still trusted, cert in the way, I'd notice.
DNSSEC/DANE would probably see a lot more adoption if one or more of the main browsers did this sort of validation by default.
(Slightly confused by this board.)
1. Hunt for solutions to your problem on forums.
2. Discover the magic link where you can submit a form with a message regarding your problem.
3. Sit back and wait for 24 hours.
4. Your problem is resolved, and you may or may not receive an email stating that the issue was resolved.
Communication is completely one way for most products.
Others with the same issues:
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=google+wallet+account+v...
With Google Domains, you get phone and email support (M-F, 9am to 9pm EST).
https://support.google.com/enterprisehelp/answer/142244?rd=1
No thanks. I'd rather have 24/7 support.
Plenty of domain & DNS providers offer 24/7 x 365 support.
There are plenty I can get Live Chat and/or 15min email responses out of. That is all I really require to do business with an infrastructure provider.
SaaS, I'd be fine with business hour support. SaaS failures don't directly cost me money and/or reputation.
https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/pricing/
Because you don't get any support whatsoever past forums without paying for it directly.
The callcenter agent will type your inquiry into the exact same ticket system that your email would have ended up in.
EDIT: its not just for total system outages, it can be things which are localised to your cluster, or whatever - who knows. This is why these services are offered. To give those who need the piece of mind that if shit goes wrong, the company you're paying will deal with immediately.
If Google is positive that their services will be uninterrupted or error prone between 9pm and 9am then they should advertise so. Things happen. Things do go wrong, they should think about expanding their support teams in other international offices to have a good coverage for the world clock.
I'm not sure where you get that idea from but companies the size of google don't page engineers because of customer tickets, regardless of whether they're opened by a callcenter agent or e-mail.
Their callcenters process thousands of calls per hour. Yours is, quite literally, a drop in the bucket.
They have monitoring in place where one of the metrics is is elevated support inquiries. However, you only appear in that bucket after someone, and usually not the callcenter agent, has triaged your ticket.
Maybe not for a $12 domain registration but Amazon does in some cases.
I'm also pretty sure that is what Google's Cloud Platform Platinum offers if you are willing to pay enough. [This part is just a guess]
To be fair, I think the last time I was woken up to deal with something was like a year ago. ;)
Already tried that with email (Google Apps for Business), and the punishment was swift like the new Apple programming language.
Integration with Google cloud resources (a la AWS Route 53), 10 million lookups/year free, pricing appears off the bat to be $12/year, free private registration.
And support! "With Google Domains, you get phone and email support (M-F, 9am to 9pm EST)."
This looks like a sensational service.
Curious the sign up for an invitation only asked if you've bought a domain before.
Example at Namecheap :
New Registration : Domain Price + Whois guard is FREE for 1 year ( With a coupon code your domain cost is reduce by $1-$2 )[1]
Transfer : Its treated as a new registration too, so the same applies. And usually transfer has some coupon or discount attached.[1]
Renewal : Domain costs + Whois guard is $2.88 [2] ( With coupon code your domain cost is reduced by $1-$2. So effectively its comes to be at the same price.
Now talking about Google, the only awesome thing I can see it provides with $12 is we get to use their Apps for Business which includes their robust email service [3] of course. This recently became paid-only service.[4] Now its not unlimited accounts but 100 alias is enough if you have multiple domains and just need one account to handle everything.
1. https://www.namecheap.com/promos/coupons.aspx
2. https://www.namecheap.com/security/whoisguard.aspx
3. http://domains.google.com/about/features.html
4. http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/pricing.html
Something they said they won't do on 8.8.8.8.
The way this has worked in the past (again iirc) with other companies is that the registrar wholesale migrated their names to another provider who purchased them at a discount.
I've never been through the process personally, but given the quantity of registrars that are going into and out of business from time to time, I'm sure it's a process that's been pretty well standardized.
The worst part is that I was "in contact" with the owner via Twitter, and he assured me that he would totally look into things at some point in the near future..
Any company can close a service (or go out of business and close all its service), and if a service fails to make a profit, eventually the company will almost certainly do so, one way or the other.
The only reason Google has a high count of such services is because Google went through a period where it started lots of services (and, also, because its remixed and rebranded a lot of services, so that more service names have gotten retired than actual services.) There's no strong reason to think that the actual risk -- particularly with paid services -- is particularly high with Google.
This does seem entirely like a whimsical side project for Google. If you want a reliable domain registrar, find one that doesn't do anything else.
They're in the domain business now, and I don't think they're going to drop out any time soon.
Seems pretty logical to me considering they have a very popular email and cloud business that requires you to have a domain.
http://socialmediatoday.com/jordanv/2264086/google-sunsets-w...
At this point they create and destroy products on a whim. They have 900 products so who cares if a million users get pissed.
Like Google Play Music All Access or any number of modern Google Things, this is something they're doing because "what if we don't", not because they have anything special to provide.
Dreadful support for paid Google Apps although we were a small startup.
- Your traffic (Search)
- Your analytics (Analytics)
- Your income (AdSense)
- Your advertising (AdWords)
- Your hosting (App Engine)
- Your DNS (Cloud DNS)
- Your domains (this)
That gives their search algorithm a pretty full picture of who owns your website, where you get your content, how much customers like it, any other sites you own, how much traffic you get, how much money you make.
And they can delist you whenever they want.
No thanks. I'll keep my Google to a minimum.
> So it is now possible to give Google
^^^^^^
Jokes (sorta?) aside, this betrays a serious failure in the way many people use network services such as those in your list - they often lack a second source. Since when did it become ok to have only one supplier for your mission-critical needs?
I give a flying fuck if I was a false positive in a huge corporation with millions of customers they can't serve all with quality support.
No, Im not giving them my business never again until they apologize.
I guess the new part is they're offering it standalone? Seems like a lead gen effort for AdWords/AdSense more than a serious product.
I could have sworn it was possible to register domains directly through Google, but I guess it could have been a cleverly disguised front-end to another registrar.
Also, there should be an option to 301 redirect your blogspot blog to a domain held by Google. Lots of bloggers have outgrown their .blogspot.com blogs.
There are two main ways to mask domain name whois information: 1) go through a proxy service, i.e., a company buys the domain under their name and gives you control, or 2) effectively use another entity's contact information with the exception of name, which is what Gandi does.
a) is rather risky to both parties. You do not own the domain, but another entity does. If you somehow lose the domain name or the entity holding the name goes under, you won't be able to get it back because it technically never belonged to you. The holder is also now legally responsible for the domain name.
b) is a much safer route with the constraint that your name must be attached to the domain name. This makes it so you always remain responsible for and the registrant of the domain name. It is yours.
Very much positive, for exactly the reasons you specified.
https://www.gandi.net/domain/whois/
http://wiki.gandi.net/en/domains/private-registration
http://wiki.gandi.net/en/contacts/privatewhois
From the home page, it's at the bottom of the green box under "Every domain name includes".
Gandi support used to be the best. Now that domain isn't they core and only business, support quality is falling. Fast.
I have an old account. And some point they migrated my old account. And now my domain is flagged as a business type domain, which it isn't. It is lock as they changed it themselves. When I've contacted them, they did not want to fix it. They messed up, denies it and won't fix it. So, for me, not so great customer support ... Anyway, I'm moving away, domain by domain.
http://gandi.net and http://dnsimple.com are both great options in this space.
> We aren’t ready for everyone to join yet (you currently need an invitation code to buy or transfer a domain), so we want those who join to play an active role in helping us improve. We're working hard to offer our customers the best domain experience possible, and we welcome your input, questions and feedback.
For a company that is notoriously bad at communicating with its customers, this is the one thing I would expect Google to not get right. Even at the private invite scale, I seriously wonder if Google will be communicating with customers with the tact and empathy required of good customer service.
this is a revamp and product consolidation and it is super late to the game, hopefully the transition for current users will be easy
[0] http://domains.google.com/about/img/sprites/features.png
They wouldn't have combined the products and created a platform if they didn't plan to expand it. I thought about how significant it'd be if Google included some sort of website builder along with the Google My Business platform. They organically have more reach with SMBs than any competitor can afford to buy. That combined with the high switching costs of websites and they have a massive opportunity as long as they don't misunderstand their target market.
Now they're offering domains and teaming up with some of the biggest website builders out there. I'd wager that 1) it's only a matter of time until their domain service is offered as part of Google My Business and 2) they offer their own website builder/CMS.
The website builder industry is competitive and noncompetitive at the same time. The companies that spend the most on marketing have the shittiest products and the companies with the most product potential 1) don't advertise or 2) don't cater to small businesses as much as they should. They're all asleep at the wheel in one way or another.
What is Google Synthetic Records? Google Search doesn't know.
So there are no actual email boxes included?
The other best part is we match the pricing of a Google Apps for Business account and offer a 15 day free trial with no credit card required.
We partner with the likes of Startup Weekend and .CO since our goal is to help you get your ideas online fast.
For those of you interested in checking it out, I'd love feedback:
Not really providing "these services." Just a web hosting shop with some automation and reseller agreements. Sorry.
In regards to accredited registrars, there's plenty of low hanging fruit out there and building out a registrar was not in our sites for our initial launch.
I can comment that EPP is in scope and we're doing some really cool shit behind the scenes in upcoming releases that would satiate your qualms in the future. I can't really comment on all fronts; but stay tuned!
Google Apps is now $50/year?
Lots of people will sign-up. These people will love the service. They will come to need this service for their businesses to survive and function properly. Two years afterward Google will do what they have done time and time again, close down the service - for unknown reasons - at every users expense.
Will it happen? I don't know but they just don't have my trust for the long term. Yes, I know that you can transfer domains fairly easily but nothing is ever that easy.
Email forwarding, doesn't stop Google reading the mail as it goes through transit. Which is a little unsettling. I'd be interested to hear/read their privacy policy regarding this.
I'm also glad to see the amount of work that went on developing this site, white text over white background, for example, is super readable. Sweating the details indeed.
Actually, they seem to be calling TLDs (not just the new ones, and not just gTLDs) "domain endings" and referring to the new ones as "new domain endings".
> Is that what we're supposed to call them?
People that know what "gTLD" means can continue to call them that, but in marketing to people who don't know anything about buying domains and are doing it for the first time -- a significant target of this effort, I suspect -- "domain endings" is clearer and more accessible.
If I were targeting that market, I would also prefer "domain endings" over "gTLDs".
People need to be educated about this new literacy. Instead, we have the people in the best position to do that education possibly trying to maintain ignorance. sigh
Looks like I'll give it a try as soon as I get an invite.
First, the last thing I want on the internet is a monopoly. Google, for all intents and purposes, is a monopoly when it comes to search and advertising. Because of that it has unique power to attempt to own other areas. If Google was known for great customer service and generally benevolent behavior this might be OK. The reality is that many of us have had really ugly experiences with this company.
I don't buy the distinction being made in terms of paid vs. unpaid services. Every Google service is paid. Every single one of them. Don't think so? Then why doesn't Google turn off ads on "free" services? No, people are paying with cash or with eyeballs-on-adds. Either way Google is monetizing each and every set of eyeballs in some way. "Free" is an illusion.
Competition is great, but Google is not a competitor it's a nassive search monopoly that could easily use that monopoly to favor any one of it's products over competitors who depend on Google search and rankings for their very survival.
At a minimum it is a potentially huge conflict of interest. If Google registers your domains, hosts your sites, runs your ads, places ads on your site, runs your email, provides your analytics and provides your search-based traffic you are one button click away from various incredible nightmare scenario each and every morning 365 days per year.
So, no, thanks, but no. I've been saying "no" to you for years, ever since that time you behaved badly, cost my clients a huge chunk of their business and all we could do was scream at a computer monitor.
No, thank you. I will stick with other excellent choices for domain registration. I will also stick to Linode and AWS for my servers. And I will stick to building sites supported by something other than advertising revenue. I will also host my own email, which isn't hard at all. I will use your analytics and, if needed, I will do some advertising with you. Alhough, lately, using Facebook intelligently for that last part is producing better results.
In other words, having learned my lessons I will not allow my clients or myself to walk into a situation where you can hurt us by behaving as you often do.
I just can't see trusting Google. Trust is one of those things that costs massively more to regain once lost. Google has done absolutley nothing to regain the trust of those of us who have seen what can happen.
Live long and prosper.
2. Google offers 0 support
3. Google rolls over to quickly to copyright requests, whats to stop them from pulling the domain from under you
No thanks
That may not matter to some people, but it could be a problem to have that critical resource outside your organization's control.
EDIT: See the posts re Gandhi, whose privacy service apparently leaves the domain registered to you. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7934145
This seems like a 30 percent premium over other offerings currently available, no doubt the value is there for some folks.
They don't want a representative sample, and they say that (and how they want it to be non-representative) right on the page. So, why is that even an objection?
watch the hype fade away in a week and everyone will forget this exists (hello Google+)
This...looks like a registrar + nameservers, and doesn't seem to really differentiate itself in any compelling way at all. Name serving + registration anywhere else, or at two separate places, isn't that different in price from the price they show in their screenshot.
Invite only for something like this is incredibly lame. I mean, whoever thought they'd pull that tactic again needs to seriously be corralled. It is amateur hour.