Knowing first hand google support I will stick to namecheap ...
- if you are paying google on an ongoing basis for something (adwords for example) they are very pro active with support.
- if you are using a free product, expect 0 or less support
- if you are receiving money from google, expect active hostility.
If I was a developer bringing in several thousand a year on the Play Store, I'd happily shell out $99/year for better support. I imagine I am not alone in that.
... you would be automatically paying Google with $300 for every thousand of sales. $99 would be redundant.
It would be nice if I could refer to a parent company with a more appealing name.
I've been using Namecheap for a few years, and have (for the most part) been pretty happy. Their SSL certificate service is super clunky, but the domain stuff is decent.
We did eventually go with NameCheap and had no issues. But the name definitely does them more harm than good for business users.
When Google first launched and I tried referring friends to use it, as a superior search service to AltaVista et al., friends would give me a look of "what the hell?" due to the name. Back then it wasn't uncommon to see media stories referencing Google's childish / baby sounding name, and how it was a ridiculous name for a service, and that the logo made it come across even worse.
I don't care for the name NameCheap either. On the other hand it's been easy to remember.
The brand grew from there. That's why Namecheap is still called Namecheap.
Disclosure: Namecheap employee/personal experience
Domains haven't been $70 each since around 1996 or so.
I recently had an issue with Google Apps, and contacted them via email for support.
I received a phone call almost immediately and the issue was resolved in minutes. I live in Fiji.
No kidding. The integration with Google Hangouts has been a disaster, and me moving to iOS has made it even worse. Of course, there are no good competitors, so I'm stuck in the holding pattern just hoping some of the ridiculous issues get fixed.
GVoice used to have ATROCIOUS call quality that seems to have been ameliorated by Hangouts. Calls within the US and Canada are still free, voicemail service is second to none, and I'm extremely happy with the texting integration with Hangouts. What else do we want?
EDIT: Also, the OSX Hangouts app crashes about every 2 hours with no error message. This is a "known issue" of varying types on Google's site, but customer service with them, well, you know how that is.
It's not necessarily intuitive unless you know to look for it, and it might not work if your Google Contacts are incomplete (as in, you don't associate your Hangouts friend with his phone number). But it works really well for me.
Oh finally, Bob Robot comes up. I click it. It says "Bob Robot isn't on Hangouts right now..." Well I don't want that. I want to send an SMS.
OK let's look for a green chat icon. Nope, just a smile button to put emojis in there.
This is OSX's Chrome plugin as stated.
Why would a company as rich as Google want to be in the domain business? It can't ever be material to them. I wouldn't be surprised if Google abandoned this business and transferred domains to, say, Godaddy.
The Google Domains Support Team is available every day from 6am to 9pm PT.
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I once had to transfer a domain for a client that Google had registered with Godaddy. Google blamed Godaddy and Godaddy blamed Google. What a nightmare.
Recently, I had to contact support for a failed payment (obscure domain extension, some address verification error), and the experience was great. I got it fixed in less than 5 minutes by contacting their live support.
Will keep using them. Their name doesn't do them justice, they are an A player in the domain space.
Backstory: I have five .io domains, three that I registered with Gandi, and two with Namecheap. When the expiration period for the Gandi ones was coming up, I got an email saying "the domains expire on xx/xx/xxxx, renew by then if you want them to stay active. If you don't renew, you can renew then any time up to 90 days after the expiration date".
As it happens, I let the three with Gandi expire, and then logged into their dashboard, renewed them about 60 days after the expiration date, end of story.
Compare: I accidentally let the two I had registered with Namecheap expire. "OK" I figured, "not a big deal, they probably have some kind of grace period as well." No. I got an email saying "these domains expired and you cannot renew them through your Namecheap account. You can contact support and they might be able to help you renew them." So, I contact support and they write back and say "we'll try, but it's going to cost $XXX.XX (somewhere around $250, if memory serves) to renew".
OK, to be fair, I did let the domains expire, so I guess I deserve what I get. But the experience renewing an expired domain with Gandi was so much better than what it was with Namecheap, that I've basically written Namecheap off as a registrar to use in the future.