Google Building a Domain Registration Service

Graculus (3653645) writes with this excerpt from The Next Web: Google [on Monday] revealed that it is building a domain registration service called Google Domains. The product is still an early work in progress, so it's in invite-only beta for now. Google's small business-facing division decided to build the product because, according to its research, 55 percent of small businesses still don't have a website. Since the domain acts as a website's foundation, Google decided to do more to help companies get started with their online presence. While Google Domains won't include hosting, website building providers Squarespace, Wix, Weebly and Shopify have signed on as partners.

Comments

Anti-Competitive

[mfh]

Okay I'll bite. Google have set themselves up as the front door of the internet. They manage a huge chunk of email, and they index the web to provide access to the web on a search basis. Google is therefore in the business of ad sales because businesses want to be visible on the web and if the majority of people are using Google to find things and send email about things, then Google is in the perfect position to earn money while providing a valuable service.

Nothing says evil like monopoly. Google offering domain registry will lead to Google offering hosting. Now then you have the official position of Google on Net Neutrality in theory but you have an all encompassing reality where it is very easy for Google to fudge the rankings in favour of those companies who pay them money for hosting and domain registry. Those domains will get priority indexing. That's the opposite of net neutrality. There is no way to prove that Google won't give priority indexing to domains it registers.

This is what we call a conflict of interest, and that is evil unless Google is willing to become completely transparent and verifiable, which will never happen because they are a traded company.