Google Eyes Domain Registration Market

1sockchuck writes "Google is now an ICANN-approved domain name registrar, an intriguing move that could be tied to its blog hosting service, Blogger. Yahoo recently dropped its domain prices to $4.98, as hosting companies use domains as a cheap way to lure customers. Registrar status could allow Google to compete aggressively on price. Bloggers seem to resist paying for hosting, so cheap domains might help Google's plans for world domination."

Comments

The possibilities...

[trekstar25]

They could easily pair this with a free hosting solution, something like Geocities, perhaps - a gig of free website development space, as long as you put the AdWords on it.

Re:So

[FrYGuY101]

Probably not.

Google is an advertising company. If their results are skewed, people might start using a competitor, and they lose out on ad revenues.

Re:Does

[Smidge204]

Last I checked, they aren't becoming a portal. Google search is still Google search.

However, Google as a company is branching out into related (and sometimes not so related) services. Now that they are publically owned they need to actually make real profits instead of just staying afloat. Becoming a domain registrar seems like a very good way to make money directly instead of relying on advertizing, and at the same time bring in more people to increase the value of their ads and profit that way.

As for Google Groups "sucking", that's an opinion. I can't really agree or disagree since I don't use it though...

I don't think anyone really has a problem with a company doing what it can to make a profit, providing that they aren't stabbing others in the back, hoarding patents or copyrights, subverting other industries with bogus standards, using asinine legal threats or trying to push through oppressive laws to do it. (ala RIAA/MPAA/MS/SCO etc)
=Smidge=

Re:Abuse of moderation detected

[drinkypoo]

That's the equivalent of modding someone's comment down because you think their nickname is stupid. We all know they're pyramid schemes, and it has nothing to do with his comment. When did it become okay to abuse moderation because you think someone is abusing the sig line on /., which is limited to 120 characters to limit the potential abuse? I know that most people don't think this site is valuable, or that moderation is useful and/or important, but I wish those people would go find another site to fuck up.

.blog

[Duncan3]

We need to force all blogs onto the .blog domain - then we can just filter out all of them at the DNS.

Billions of pictures of peoples cats would no longer terrify the world, woohoo!

The Internet is the OS

[Infonaut]

When Google creates its own Linux distro incorporating Google features into the desktop, that's when Microsoft can put up the sign, "Last one out turn off the lights."

I think of it a bit differently. It's not really about the desktop at all. Microsoft was born in the era when the desktop operating system ruled. But Google was born in the Internet Era, and it shows in their strategy. Their goal seems to be to develop a wide array of applications that live on the Internet, thereby obviating the need for a desktop monopoly. If everything is on the Net, who really cares what OS you're using?

Microsoft comes at it from the opposite direction, attempting to extend their desktop operating system to the Internet. But the Achilles Heel of this strategy is backward compatibility. Microsoft has to support its legacy operating systems, and no matter what they do to attempt to take over the Internet, they can't adequately leverage their desktop OS monopoly because they have to first convince people that it's worth the money to upgrade to gain the benefits of the Microsoft Internet.

Google is constantly improving their applications and they don't have to worry about legacy operating system issues. They can simply piggyback off of Internet standards and when they do push into the OS, they're leveraging Microsoft's immense investment in Windows. It doesn't really matter whether Linux, Windows, or the Mac is dominant, as far as Google is concerned. As long as no one is able to box them out by controlling access to the Web, Google is limited only by their ability to deliver great web apps.

domain registrar + dark-fibre = ?

[cosmic_0x526179]

... perhaps a new entry in the hosting market. After all, they do have a deep understanding of distributing content around the world. It also makes it somewhat easier for them to crawl the content of said servers.