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."
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.
can I host my website out of gmail?
~/.sig: No such file or directory
Email, books, images, video, domain name registration and more...When will they run everything ont he internet?
Will domains registered through them rank higher in search results?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
It seems that Google is now competing for Microsofts held place as world ruler. They are literally getting into every buisness available. So far so good, but what's next? Google-approved real-estate? Google water supply?
This is a much more attractive alternative to Verisign, even over fun names like GoDaddy, and NameBargain.
Having done ISP work back in the day, I have personally submitted registrations on thousands of domains with the venerable Network Solutions. With Verisign and the recent mix, I have lost tons of my own personal domains I have collected over the years -- and registration on these things is quite expensive! Finally there are alternatives, and I think I would trust Google over Microsoft, Verisign, or the US Government. This is my Internet, and I don't want it fucked-up!
Also, I think that Google doing root nameserver fun would be more like a DNS cache for them.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
also known as a Googleplex
Is it only me, or does this particular word usage implies something not quite honest? I don't see anything wrong with having a loss leader - a product you may sell at prices below cost in order to gain customers which then can be upsold with other services - hosting and etc.
Google has a very kind policy when it comes to third-party GMail hacks: They don't care. That is, they don't care at all. Google is permitted to change its structure and/or features at any time without telling a soul, rendering your application/extension obsolete. Google hasn't got the time to go after people using GMail as a personal server, nor do the staff have time to allow them and accept responsibility for their functioning. It's a fair system, in my mind.
For those of you who missed it... A Googolplex is a 1 with a googol zeros after it.
Great ! Now our domains can get hijacked at newer, bigger registrars! Thank you ICANN !
Thats right. However, it is usually a good idea to stick to your core competancies. Only a few companies have successfully able to get pieces of different pies. There too most of them did that thru acquisitions.
I know the world exists because I exist.
Just wait until they land on the dark blue spaces, baby. I built 11 hotels on Boardwalk and 8 of them on Park Place. One of these times around the board, they're gonna desperately need that $200 from passing Go, because rent on my dark blue properties is $11 billion a hit.
I.e., affordable certificates, give verisign more competition - call 'em gcerts or something.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Well, they would still have to pay the registry $6 per domain like everyone else.
I mean, .GOO has so many possibilities in pr0n alone. And nanotech.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I suspect the Troll moderation may be due to the freegamingsystems.com link in his sig. There is a great deal of hostility toward the sheer volume of people posting "give me a referral for a free piece of electronics and i'll paypal you x dollars" advertisements all over the Internet.
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=
Google Calculator
yahoo DOES NOT offer $4.98 per domain --- terms are strictly limited to ONE domain per NEW customer; after that, their $9.95 per domain per year applies:
"Domains price Offer is open to new customers that purchase Domains. Limit one offer per customer, and one use per customer on a single account. Offer expires February 08, 2005 at 11:59 PM PST. Offers may not be combined with any other offers or discounts, separated, redeemed for cash, or transferred. Other terms and conditions apply; see the Yahoo! Small Business Terms of Service when you sign up."
Google is tired of everyone learning what they are up to via domain name registerations.
Now, they will be able to register domain names for secret projects, and keep the domain names secret :)
I've said it before and I'll say it again here. 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'm really enjoying being able to use the Googlenet.
Google tends to have a good eye for simple interfaces for managing things:
- Search
- Gmail
- Blogger
- Picasa
- Google Desktop
If google carries that tradition forward, I could see myself transfering my domains to them rather them, since they tend to be:
1. Competitive pricing seems crucial at google. Everything is free or low cost.
2. Quality
3. Good support. Google does respond. I had an issue with Google Desktop, and Gmail... both times I got a quick response. Amazingly. I was shocked.
I can't say the above for any of the major registrar's on the market.
So if Google expands beyond bloggers and allows domain (especially bulk) registration/transfer.... I'm in.
Everybody's speculating on how this could let Google charge a fee for Bloggers to have their own domain name. Bloggers already have an FTP to your own server option so this doesn't add much.
Surely much more interesting is the concept of Gmail with your own domain name.
With an administration tool allowing Joe User to setup family and friend create email accounts under your their domain name with Google taking care of all the scanning/filtering/storage.
Such an option would give them something different to Hotmail and YahooMail to the point of being something worth paying for. Sure some ISP's already offer this but none of the web interfaces I've seen touch GMail.
That might even explain why it's still in beta...
[)amien
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I bought a domain from someone once who originally bought the name from Yahoo domains. When I tried to get it transferred, I ran into a whole host of problems. The official reply from Yahoo when I tried to contact their technical support staff:
"Dear valued Yahoo customer,
We are sorry, but Yahoo is unable to offer technical support for Yahoo domains."
So I tried calling Melbourne IT (Yahoo resells Melbourne registrations), who of course told me to call Yahoo.
I wouldn't worry much about Yahoo having competition, tehy seem to be doing a very good job of shooting themselves in the foot anyway.
bash: rtfm: command not found
Imagine if they get down close to free? There will not be anything sensable left.
Nah, they'd just stick the word beta in the logo and thats your warning.
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!
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
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.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
It's not actually part of his sig -- it's part of the comment. (turn on "Disable Sigs" in Comment Preferences, and re-load) He just labeled it as "Sig:".
Ob. Spaceballs ripoff:
"Google the flamethrower!"
"Evil will always triumph because good is dumb." -- Dark Helmet
all your domain are belong to us
... 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.
This msg is brought to you by the letter 'W'.. for Worthless Wuss
Personally, I think google's controlling all these different things is great. They have delivered on almost every single thing they've attempted. They combine power and simplicity in a way everyone loves, and maybe when most of your services are through google, they can link some things together (with appropiate security though) if google ever becomes corrupt then we can just move on
I often find myself writing the company name in the google search field than trying to find a randomly similar url. I think having specific domain names is loosing its importance these days because the namespace is so highly utilized.
If you want to get into abuse of a system then I think the argument can be made that since the parent post in question added the sig in to the body of the comment it is no longer a sig in the proper sense. A proper sig can be disabled as was noted. Who's abusing what here?
Since there is already a system built to try and prevent moderation abuse, meta-moderation, and none to prevent anyone from posting their sig in the body of a comment I would suggest that the abuse here was made by the sig rather than the moderation.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
It's clear that google will sell domain name powered by gmail accounts. So registering yourfavouritenamehere.com with google you will get @yourfavouritenamehere.com mail addresses trasparently usable through gmail webmail.
When the URL namespace gets crowded, a good search engine is the answer. The more people register domain names, the more they need to use a search engine to disambiguate the various URLs that may or may not correspond to what they're looking for. Providing cheap domain registration will lead more people to use Google to search for a particular website rather than attempting to remember a URL.