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Comment by joeframbach | Hacker News Reader

Serious question: What happens in three years when Google decides to "sunset" this service like Wave, Labs, Reader, Buzz, Code Search, Knol, etc? Their target audience doesn't know how to work with registrars, which puts them in the worst possible situation when Google Domains is dropped. Will they help their users transition to other registrars?

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It's been years since I worked in the domain name space, but as I recall vaguely, part of the registrar accreditation agreement is that you have provisions to transition your customer domain names to another registrar in the event you stop being a registrar, voluntarily or involuntarily.

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.

Thanks, that is really good to know.

I had to move my domains from an unresponsive/dead registrar (NameTerrific). I emailed Tucows (the parent?) and they sent me a domain migration code for the domain. It was pretty simple, luckily.

I had to do the same thing from NameTerrific but got my migration code from the top-level.

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..

Yeah, NameTerrific is completely dead, I'm going to move away ASAP. At least he put up a "we're dead" page.

You are correct. Look up RegisterFly for an example of a registrar going under. GoDaddy took over their customers.

> Serious question: What happens in three years when Google decides to "sunset" this service like Wave, Labs, Reader, Buzz, Code Search, Knol, etc?

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.

Has Google ever "sunset" a product they actually charge money for? That might help us understand what they'd do in this case. But I don't think there's a lot of precedent there.

Google discontinued (presumably paid) radio and television ads a few months after starting each.

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.

> 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.

Seems pretty logical to me considering they have a very popular email and cloud business that requires you to have a domain.

Google is not just a registrar, but a registry, with 19 TLDs that they will operate: https://www.google.com/registry/

They're in the domain business now, and I don't think they're going to drop out any time soon.

I see the first popular attempt to register if .NEWS is available is hacker.news.

Google closing down the radio & tv ads business (c. 2009) was a function more of an acquisition that went badly and an industry that was loathe to change - so imho don't think there's a great corollary here.

Sure, Postini. They basically transferred everyone over to Google Apps. I'm not entirely sure how that worked, though.

I don't think new users can sign up for Postini, but they're still supporting it.

Postini support got dropped very recently and on very short notice. It sucked.

Ugh. Sorry to hear that.

So, they have not "sunseted" it, they have transferred it to their other paid services

Google Checkout

Not a lot of precedent, but Wildfire, a Social Marketing Suite they acquired, is one

http://socialmediatoday.com/jordanv/2264086/google-sunsets-w...

Not sure what the terms for Domains are, but for App Engine they will give you at least one year, IIRC. They introduced the policy when they started charging for the platform.

ICANN has policies in place if a "Registrar" goes under. They will request other "Registrars" to take over.

Hopefully transferring domains is easy regardless. I wouldn't ever recommend a registrar that was hard to quit.

Yeah, there is no way I'd trust Google with something as important as domains.

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.

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