Another headstone in the google graveyard. This one doesn't make any sense to me, either, unless there are weird regulatory issues they want to avoid since it seemed like a very popular registrar. Or maybe they just didn't want to staff any limited customer support team.
I'm also confused, it's a paid product! If it wasn't making enough money, why didn't they just raise the price? It already wasn't the cheapest name registrar, so I don't think people were selecting it solely based on cost (I went with it because of the free 100 email aliases included, but others liked the clean layout and simplicity compared to some other options.)
I get why they kill free things that don't make them money, but it seems very strange with a paid product, especially when, as others have said, they have GCP, which will presumably require a third party registrar in the future.
It's not a traditional "paid product" where you can reduce cost, increase efficiency and/or take advantage of economy of scale. There are foxed ICANN fees per domain, most registrar add a markup on that, sell ownership data, auction popular expired domains, squat good names, etc. Google Domains (and Cloudflare) main spiel is they sell domains at cost as they make their money else where. It was intentionally a business that was never meant to make money.
It wasn't "the cheapest registrar" because they didn't offer "signup deals", just like cloudflare. Other cheaper registrar offer a signup deal for $1 or $2 a domain (subtext: renews for $24 dollars the next year)
This is so disappointing. I never had an issue with Google Domains. It offered free WHOIS protection, easy to buy a domain and set it up. Nothing fancy. No BS fees. Shame
They offer that now, but back in 2014 when Google Domains launched many registrars offered it with an additional fee (like $1 per mo or some other ridiculous pittance). I admit I don't know the GDPR ramifications of such a thing now.
I've been happy with service from Hover.com. It's from "old internet infrastructure company" Tucows and seems incentivized to deliver a good service because it is an infrastructure tool from an infrastructure company.
I’ve been a (paying) customer of Google Domains for quite a number of years now. Better options have arisen for my needs over the years (largely family name domain parking and email aliases/forwarding), but it honestly hasn’t been worth my time to bother rejiggering everything and transferring it all out.
I guess now it is? How bad is Squarespace for this sort of “set it and forget it” kinda thing?
How long until the "don't trust Google to not kill a product" feeling becomes so widespread it begins to hurt them? I don't know any historical precedents...
I wouldn't really say that for any of the new products that people actually wanted to use. Including Google Domains (even if it might not be an effective use of workforce for Alphabet).
no one used Google Stadia because the business model and service architecture made no sense for a new service and for a company that has a habit of abandoning project that aren't an immediate runaway success stories.
Google legitimately thought they can enter a brand new market, and treat it like they are already the largest player in it. They duped themselves by honestly believing that "this is not the gaming market, this the the Cloud Gaming market". They did get most of the "cloud gaming" enthusiasts on board. All 200 of them.
They weren't like XBox or Nvidia who just had to go to gaming companies and strike a deal or ask for permission to stream their existing games. They were a new "console", you needed to develop for stadia. They needed to pay millions to incentivize companies to put the effort to port their existing games to stadia. Those companies had no customer for the "stadia console" version of their game other than Google sine no one has a "stadia console" or any way otherwise to play that game.
Those tactics may work for Sony or Nintendo or _maybe_ Microsoft. But not for a nobody in the business that literally has no user-base, no games, no history. They had nothing, and tried to pull a "we're the leaders in this market we can do anything we want and everyone will have no option but to take it"
I'd say it's "besides ads" just like Search is. It's a destination site that also serves ads, instead of serving ads on other people's destination sites. One could imagine a world where Search and Youtube were separate entities, both using Ads for income. Ads itself is more of a marketplace of eyeballs.
It has been like that for a long time, but it seemed like a lot of people thought they wouldn't kill GCP. But this makes sense, they might partition GCP instead of just killing it.
> it seemed like a lot of people thought they wouldn't kill GCP
I'm one of them. Cloud services is a large opportunity Google will be stupid to ignore/give up. I anticipate the service evolving, but I don't see an outright death of Google Cloud.
After being an enthusastic early advocate for Google (Gmail since invite in 2004), I've been slowly migrating away from Google for years.
The turning point for me was when they killed Google Music, which I had been using for a decade, forcing me to move my large catalog of songs elsewhere. I self host via Plex now. Strike 1.
Then they killed the "free domain email", which became freeish (grandfathered)
"google workgroups", which became pay up or we kill it. I spent many hours back and forthing with their email support trying to get admin access to my account to no avail. They claimed I needed to reach out to my domain admin. Uhhh sorry I own it and I'm the only guy thats on it or ever used it. There's no one else but me (I never had an admin, as I was just somehow transitioned during the grandfathering). No luck. I (nervously) let Google auto-kill the account, after quickly migrating everything to Fastmail via IMAP (and hand moving my calendar!). Strike 2.
Then (long story short) my Google Fi and Google Pixel experience was fine, until it suddenly wasn't. No human to complain to. Top of the line Pixel phone died like 14 months from purchase, no recourse. Buy a new phone or else. Strike 3.
The pattern is clear, Google services are fine up until the moment they aren't. At that point you're up a creek, as there are (by design) no humans to complain to.
All that is left now is my domain on Google Domains (well that and a free gmail account which I forward), which I figured was safe-ish (as they can't possibly pull the rug out from underneath domain owners can they?). But secretly been monitoring for signs I need to drop that as well. Looks like the time is now.
So.... any thoughts on whether Squarespace will be an improvement? Or should I start looking for another domain name registrar?
Since domains can only ever have a max of ten years registration at any given time, sometimes the registry won't allow domain transfers that already have nine years of registration.
Not to overshadow all your other excellent points, but re: Google Fi, the few times I've had an issue I was able to quickly contact a helpful (if seemingly disempowered - they had to escalate to their manager for any approvals) online agent.
Agree that their service was decent, never had any problems that their automated system couldn't troubleshoot and ultimately fix. Activation process was straightforward. Honestly I do like their services. As I said they're great, until they aren't.
Issue was that my phone was defective, likely a design problem. Battery life problems around 1 year, wouldn't charge. Google fixed first for free under warranty. Problem popped back up around 5 months later and they told me to pound dirt since it was out of warranty. I said it's the same problem, you didn't fix it the first time when it was in warranty. Apparently a lot of people had the problem, likely a design problem related to life of battery/power connector on PCB. End of the day Google refused to acknowledge their problem, and this is on their flagship phone. I had no choice but to buy a new phone... which is ridiculous considering what I paid and only got a year out of it.
I just got to the point where I got tired of being at Google's mercy when something went wrong. This is my digital life, my domain, my calendar, decades of emails. It's too stressful when a corner case occurs and there's no human being in the loop to make things right. I'm willing to pay for service, just not with Google any longer. I figure I'm paying to get a human on the phone, and some accountability.
Google keeps trying to ping my company and get us to switch to their cloud. I say no way in heck I'm going to put mission critical infrastructure and data in their hands.
Google Music libraries were automatically migrated to YT Music, which honestly is a better product now. They didn't "kill" the functionality and didn't force you to migrate anywhere...
Yeah I refused to be "migrated" (forced) to join YT music, where it was clear that my personal library of songs would be treated as a second class citizen next to the paid promotional content (suggested artists, songs etc) and ads (unless I pay for premium of course).
Felt like bait and switch to me. They forced me to make a decision. I took my ball and went home.
It seems to me it already has. I spent ~ a decade being pretty immersed in the Google ecosystem, and after going through the ringer dozens of times and finally realizing being one of their users will never stop being an unpaid, unrespected beta tester, I gave up on them. Bought an iPhone and moved services from Google where possible.
I remember this[1] article from a few years ago on the subject of Google's shutdowns hurting its brand. It's even funnier to read now with it being written shortly after Stadia's launch. The author and everyone else were pointing out that they have little expectation for the service to be around in a few years. And it turned out we were right!
Protonmail is very expensive for what it is. I don't care about their privacy (it's email) and I don't need anything but an email service that can support 3+ domains.
I have used Fastmail, and it is good. Currently I'm using my own domain on iCloud+, as I'm already paying Apple for the right to do so. But that's the good thing about owning my own domain...I can take it with me.
For what I know it already does. I know people considering migrating some infrastructure to the cloud and if they're not already aware of Google's reliability I'll tell them.
Jeez, could they have possibly given less notice? Now I have to scramble to migrate all of my domains away from Google/Squarespace this weekend. Damn it.
I have zero desire to be in business with Squarespace.
I don't like businesses I haven't specifically chosen managing my digital affairs and buyouts put me in that position. Plus I don't trust Squarespace at all.
Fortunately this is the last Google product I was still using, so after this migration I will be 100% google free, which will be a great day.
Sounds like you had a very deep relationship with Google that went beyond just a simple registration of a domain name.
I don't know Squarespace as a company, but looking at the wikipedia entry, they are a publicly-traded American company on the NYSE and appear to have removed websites that promoted bigotry or hate, etc. so how bad could they really be? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squarespace
> ...appear to have removed websites that promoted bigotry or hate, etc.
This is exactly the problem. I don't go to a domain registrar to be my parent and/or make social decisions for me. I go there to register domains and manage DNS records, that's it. That Squarespace management felt the need to assert themselves into that process with social contagion related matters is deeply concerning and frankly, a deal breaker for me. It'd be like AT&T cancelling your phone service because they didn't like the content of your conversations.
Imagine if you were still a freelance website designer or something for small businesses and now your biggest low cost competitor just bought all of your domains with the intention to convert as many as possible to customers. Very cool Google.
Does anyone know whether or not this ties in with Google Registry (a.k.a. Charleston Road Registry)? That's the entity that owns GTLDs like .app and .dev. I'm going to guess Google is hanging on to that part of it.
Do you have a source for this? I'm really curious on this for .dev domains, and how it will affect the nicer pricing Google Domains offered against all other registrars for their own internal registry domains
(And you seem really knowledgeable in this space, heh)
... and the new registrar (Squarespace) is increasing pricing for seemingly no additional features.
>Under the terms of the agreement, Squarespace will honor all existing Google Domains customers' renewal prices for at least 12 months following the closing of the transaction
I was a Google die hard, everything except Reader that they killed made sense. At this point it seems like the CFO is in charge and no good product is safe.
Reader probably made “sense” too for the axe-wielding CFO, in that I can’t imagine it generated any meaningful revenue. But I also can’t imagine it consumed much in the way of resources either…
I still use Gmail, but that’s it for me among Google’s offerings. (I can’t easily transition away from that due to using my email address for several hundred login credentials, though I suppose I really should begin that project.) But certainly for anything new, I have no confidence in any Google products, paid or unpaid.
Sure, happy to. It's a bit long-winded, though. For context, I'm in the UK and I'm registered as a business.
I was perfectly happy with Gandi until 2016 or so. Political changes in my country made dealing with the EU more complex and potentially more expensive, and I needed to to move my ~100 domain portfolio elsewhere. I originally started looking for a UK domain registrar[1] to keep the UK sales tax (VAT) simple and avoid the credit card fees & arbitrary conversion rate for an overseas transaction. I spent a Saturday or so scouting out options, factoring in:
* purchase and renewal price, with VAT
* overall look and feel of admin panels
* workflow of (and feedback on) transferring domains in and out, and other admin tasks
* how likely the company was to be eaten by another registrar
I've tended to have my web + email stuff split across multiple orgs to reduce instances of single point of failure:
* domains at one registrar, so I can keep track
* DNS at Cloudflare (reliably fastest at DNSPerf), all but one domain is on the the free plan with Cloudflare features disabled (i.e. purely DNS).
* hosting at a build-your-own cloud provider (DigitalOcean and recently Hetzner)
* email at managed provider (Fastmail currently)
Ultimately, UK registrars turned out quite expensive compared to north American registrars, with no clear advantage. Even with the VAT being reclaimable, the sums worked out in favour of looking overseas.
I found Porkbun when I was looking for off-piste domain registrars for a couple of ccTLD domains I had. There's a single .ag which is the most expensive to renew, and comparatively few registrars support it. I ran the numbers on the portfolio of domains for each of the off-piste registrars if I moved all the domains in…and that was expensive.
I told myself I could manage >1 domain registrar if I'm organised, so I re-ran the numbers with a split between the exotic TLDs and the boring ones. I was left with Namecheap & Porkbun for the boring (cheaper) domains. I registered 3x domains at each -- all burners, a ccTLD + a gTLD + their cheapest 99c offering -- and ran some tests. I ignored the SPOF stuff above since these were r&d domains, effectively. The tests included:
* how easy it was to administer via the control panel, including transfers in and out
* testing the support team with a minor, non-documented issue
* how much junk email I'd end up with
* the overall 'feel' of the registrar
Namecheap didn't fare well, sadly. The ccTLD I set up was transferred out (to Porkbun), but remained in the Namecheap control panel. I deliberately chose a .uk domain to test this with, since the process is a little whacky[2]. To their credit, Porkbun handled it seamlessly, exactly as their kb doc explained. Namecheap continued to send my expiry warnings about the domain (which was safe at Porkbun), and a support ticket was not able to have it removed from my account at Namecheap. Minor, granted, but enough to put me off.
Porkbun was mostly better out of the gate. I set up a CAA record on my burner domain (at Porkbun) and it broke DNS completely. I opened a ticket, explained what I'd done, and had a prompt, courteous reply back within a few hours. I'd used the wrong CAA syntax, which clobbered the DNS. When I fixed that, it worked perfectly. This not-in-the-kb support ticket stuff was not planned, but it worked out really well.
I moved all-but-one of my domains to Porkbun. I'd move the .ag domain if they supported it, but they don't yet. The .ag is languishing at Gandi, and there's a support ticket open with them (2 days and counting) to get an auth code to transfer out since it's not shown on the domain control panel, and with their upcoming price changes I'm keen to get that out before the PE folks turn it into a wasteland.
So, Porkbun: it works, they have a good experience that fits my workflow, and they don't have the upselling bullshit that GoDaddy and Namecheap seem...
The product isn't being sold, just the domain names. And you can't exactly just delete millions of domain names, it'd be an ICANN contract violation (as well as just being a horrible idea and causing endless amounts of harm to the Internet as a whole).
Shit, there are computers doing productive work and going strong on MSDOS 6.22 here in Mexico. Released in 1994, that makes it 30 year old software working without issues.
Google software can only DREAM of doing that. Microsoft was doing software while Google people were still even not planned to be born.
Fun trivia of the day: MS-DOS 1 through 7.0 only reached EOL in 2001, and MS-DOS 7.1 and 8 which were shipped with Windows 9x only reached EOL in 2006.
If we consider the start year to be 1981, the year MS-DOS 1 came out, that is twenty years of official, commercial support, if we count 7.1 and 8 that's twenty five years.
If you need software you can count on to still be there a few decades down the line, if not more de facto, count on Microsoft to deliver.
specifically, how are those audio files bought from the M$ mu$ic store when they pulled the plug on the licensing server for their DRM?
your claim of still running on modern Windows would be impressive if it is actually true, but saying to use a completely different OS is not something the vast majority of people not typically reading HN are going to do.
I mean, I'm still running Paint Shop Pro 5 and Winamp on Windows 11 like I'm still in the late 90s.
Windows and Microsoft are the legendary backwards compatibility outlier in the software industry where essentially everyone else moves fast and breaks shit.
Why dafuq would I care about a bug related to a streaming service I've never even heard of when all I do is play locally stored music files?
Incidentally, I still have not come across a suitable replacement for Winamp all these years later. They all have crappy UIs or bring features that I do not want and get in my way.
Fair enough. If you're only playing local files that were obtained from a trustworthy source then you wouldn't be affected.
With a complete RCE like that though, I would definitely not advise playing music downloaded from peer-to-peer networks. While I'm not familiar with the exact requirements to exploit the vulnerability, I would err on the side of caution and assume that music files can be crafted that contain malicious metadata which can achieve similar results without actually being connected to the streaming service.
The details are all right there: It's a vulnerability with the in_mp3.dll plugin (it's the decoder for playing MP3s), specifically with insufficient checks against malformed name and artist tags (probably ID3 tags?).
It's fixed in Winamp v5.52 and above, and the version I use is v5.531 so I'm not affected as it turns out.
I'm sure there are other bugs that I'm affected by, but again: Not really concerned about it.
Yeah, to clarify, the part I wasn't sure about is if it was required to somehow integrate your local Winamp installation with the streaming service, or if it could be exploited simply by playing a downloaded music file. It sounds like it could indeed be exploited without being connected to the service.
At least until Clippy dies, at which point some people will miss loving him, and probably a few more will miss hating him. Either way, he will be missed.
(quiet gasp) He's gone? I must have lost track of the time I guess. Anyway, I'm gonna go get some exercise playing a VR game (kneels down and leans head forward uncomfortably to look into a Gameboy Virtual Boy).
How many of the products on the Killed by Google list do you think is "products actively used and loved by users"? Like half a dozen on that whole list? How many had you even heard about?
This Domains shutdown definitely qualifies for the short list though, and is the most mystifying shutdown of theirs in like a decade. It was a paid service with clear strategic importance and clearly a ton of happy customers.
Things I am or was actively using (and mostly liked):
Inbox, Domains, Reader, Wave, GChat, (Hangouts, but it doesn't fully count), AdSense mobile app, Google+, goog.gl, Play Music (YouTube Music sucks), Buzz, Labs (particularly in Gmail), Google WiFi app (the home app is worse), Picasa, and I can probably find more.
I have stopped using any new Google product, and am slowly phasing out my reliance on their other products.
Also, a quick skim of that page lists products from at least the 1990s before Google even existed which seems unfair if you are trying to objectively match up counts. Microsoft does have a few more decades on Google.
Microsoft kills products that were dead anyway. Google hypes you up, cuddles you, tells you that you're the best and then pushes you off the cliff when you're not looking because you farted in bed the other night.
I watched the recent developments to Twitter, Google and Reddit, and loved it all.
One way for self-hosted service to catch up is to wait for the big companies to mess up, and they're messed up very well at this moment.
Google previously changed their account expiration policy, and decided to lock users out of their usernames instead of allowing the old owner to re-active it, making the expiration permanently destructive for the user.
This effectively told their users that use of Google services is not "maintenance-free", you have to constantly engage with Google to keep it alive. And funny enough... maintenance costs is one of the reasons why people choose to abandoned their soft-host services.
Meme or not, it legitimately was my favorite "social media" site ever. I'd read interesting things on my feed, and share it to a pool with my other friends, who'd also share the interesting things they read, and we'd all be able to discuss it. It was like reddit but just for my group of friends. It was great.
Just yesterday there was a post here not too thrilled about how Gandi is handling their latest price increases and their dropped support for 'free included' email?
Now would be a good time for Cloudflare to announce they've (finally) added .app and .dev support.
Nonetheless, Squarespace isn't bad but I found their domain pricing to be overpriced to target the specific market that doesn't really care about domain pricing they just want their domain and Squarespace set up at once. I can't see myself sticking around post the grace period mentioned.
I briefly transferred one of my domains from Google Domains to Cloudflare, but at least at that time CF required the domain to use its DNS. While that's generally not an issue with me because I use other CF services, I felt it might limit me too much down the line so I transferred the domain back to Google after the 60-day waiting period. Ah, well.
Yep still the case. Good if you're already using cloudflare and therefore the at cost pricing can wind up saving you a bit, otherwise you would be better served with the likes of porkbun or namecheap. Gandi used to be another before it was sold.
I like Squarespace’s domain hosting. The only problem is indeed that they will be a couple of bucks more than competitors.
That being said, they seem the most stable of the companies in this space that is not otherwise egregiously bad in some way or the other, so I’ve been willing to pay those few bucks more. For the key domains I own it adds up to around $20-$30 more a year which isn’t bad for the greater piece of mind IMO.
I've been using Google Domains for a few years (previously used Namecheap); but, a few months ago, I took a domain I don't actively use and transferred it to Porkbun after reading so many positive comments on HN about that registrar. I was thinking, "Well, you never know about Google, so I may as well see how it goes, just in case." Have, indeed, been very pleased with Porkbun. The article says it'll be some months before this deal goes through, but...
*Later edit*: Decided to go ahead and transfer the other domains there, too. Done.
Porkbun is an excellent choice, I love their support! I wish they supported .ca domains (the only reason I'm using NameSilo) but when I asked in the past, they said they have no future plans to.
Just wanted to let you know that we recently onboarded .ca! We're slowly growing out our ccTLD portfolio too so if there are others folks have been waiting on please let us know so we can prioritized.
.it was also in our onboarding queue, it should be live now!
I'd have to check about the EUR and VAT questions, but my guess is because we can only charge in USD currently it would mean any EUR price we showed wouldn't be "true," since banks ex rate may vary/have added fees.
edit: forgot to mention, use code EXODUS to get $1 off three transfers ;)
When you transfer a domain to Porkbun, do any pre-paid years of registration travel across with the domain transfer, or are you starting "from scratch" in that regard?
Nice! So, not only no loss involved, but there's a bonus added? Guess Porkbun's gettin' another happy customer soon. Saw that they also offer a few other services I'd likely use as well, so win/win for them (and me) I suppose.
It's not a bonus, you're paying for that extra year. The way domain transfers work is, they're not free; you pay for a year of renewal as part of them.
All registrar domain transfers work the same: you pay for one extra year and then you can transfer. This means if your domain is registered to max years you can't transfer. Or that was my experience anyway.
I just registered a porkbun account -- I had used google domains because I trust their security.
Re: porkbun: A+ work for allowing multiple yubikeys. If anyone else is looking for a registrar that has their security shit together, they seem promising.
No idea. I use them strictly for domain-hosting. I use other services for things like that, mainly to avoid the issues of "too many eggs in one basket" and "jack of all trades, master of none."
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 329 ms ] threadI'm also confused, it's a paid product! If it wasn't making enough money, why didn't they just raise the price? It already wasn't the cheapest name registrar, so I don't think people were selecting it solely based on cost (I went with it because of the free 100 email aliases included, but others liked the clean layout and simplicity compared to some other options.)
I get why they kill free things that don't make them money, but it seems very strange with a paid product, especially when, as others have said, they have GCP, which will presumably require a third party registrar in the future.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36346941
It wasn't "the cheapest registrar" because they didn't offer "signup deals", just like cloudflare. Other cheaper registrar offer a signup deal for $1 or $2 a domain (subtext: renews for $24 dollars the next year)
I guess now it is? How bad is Squarespace for this sort of “set it and forget it” kinda thing?
No one used Google Stadia because Google kills things with little warning, which subsequently caused Google to kill Stadia.
Google will never be able to launch another product.
Google legitimately thought they can enter a brand new market, and treat it like they are already the largest player in it. They duped themselves by honestly believing that "this is not the gaming market, this the the Cloud Gaming market". They did get most of the "cloud gaming" enthusiasts on board. All 200 of them.
They weren't like XBox or Nvidia who just had to go to gaming companies and strike a deal or ask for permission to stream their existing games. They were a new "console", you needed to develop for stadia. They needed to pay millions to incentivize companies to put the effort to port their existing games to stadia. Those companies had no customer for the "stadia console" version of their game other than Google sine no one has a "stadia console" or any way otherwise to play that game.
Those tactics may work for Sony or Nintendo or _maybe_ Microsoft. But not for a nobody in the business that literally has no user-base, no games, no history. They had nothing, and tried to pull a "we're the leaders in this market we can do anything we want and everyone will have no option but to take it"
https://killedbygoogle.com/
The only place I interact with google these days is my Google TV. Here's to hoping they don't drop support for that as well.
I'm one of them. Cloud services is a large opportunity Google will be stupid to ignore/give up. I anticipate the service evolving, but I don't see an outright death of Google Cloud.
I'm not throwing Google a challenge ;)
The turning point for me was when they killed Google Music, which I had been using for a decade, forcing me to move my large catalog of songs elsewhere. I self host via Plex now. Strike 1.
Then they killed the "free domain email", which became freeish (grandfathered) "google workgroups", which became pay up or we kill it. I spent many hours back and forthing with their email support trying to get admin access to my account to no avail. They claimed I needed to reach out to my domain admin. Uhhh sorry I own it and I'm the only guy thats on it or ever used it. There's no one else but me (I never had an admin, as I was just somehow transitioned during the grandfathering). No luck. I (nervously) let Google auto-kill the account, after quickly migrating everything to Fastmail via IMAP (and hand moving my calendar!). Strike 2.
Then (long story short) my Google Fi and Google Pixel experience was fine, until it suddenly wasn't. No human to complain to. Top of the line Pixel phone died like 14 months from purchase, no recourse. Buy a new phone or else. Strike 3.
The pattern is clear, Google services are fine up until the moment they aren't. At that point you're up a creek, as there are (by design) no humans to complain to.
All that is left now is my domain on Google Domains (well that and a free gmail account which I forward), which I figured was safe-ish (as they can't possibly pull the rug out from underneath domain owners can they?). But secretly been monitoring for signs I need to drop that as well. Looks like the time is now.
So.... any thoughts on whether Squarespace will be an improvement? Or should I start looking for another domain name registrar?
https://kb.porkbun.com/article/224-transfer-domain-from-goog...
Issue was that my phone was defective, likely a design problem. Battery life problems around 1 year, wouldn't charge. Google fixed first for free under warranty. Problem popped back up around 5 months later and they told me to pound dirt since it was out of warranty. I said it's the same problem, you didn't fix it the first time when it was in warranty. Apparently a lot of people had the problem, likely a design problem related to life of battery/power connector on PCB. End of the day Google refused to acknowledge their problem, and this is on their flagship phone. I had no choice but to buy a new phone... which is ridiculous considering what I paid and only got a year out of it.
I just got to the point where I got tired of being at Google's mercy when something went wrong. This is my digital life, my domain, my calendar, decades of emails. It's too stressful when a corner case occurs and there's no human being in the loop to make things right. I'm willing to pay for service, just not with Google any longer. I figure I'm paying to get a human on the phone, and some accountability.
Google keeps trying to ping my company and get us to switch to their cloud. I say no way in heck I'm going to put mission critical infrastructure and data in their hands.
Felt like bait and switch to me. They forced me to make a decision. I took my ball and went home.
I remember this[1] article from a few years ago on the subject of Google's shutdowns hurting its brand. It's even funnier to read now with it being written shortly after Stadia's launch. The author and everyone else were pointing out that they have little expectation for the service to be around in a few years. And it turned out we were right!
[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/04/googles-constant-pro...
… and AI trainer
I have zero desire to be in business with Squarespace.
Fortunately this is the last Google product I was still using, so after this migration I will be 100% google free, which will be a great day.
I don't know Squarespace as a company, but looking at the wikipedia entry, they are a publicly-traded American company on the NYSE and appear to have removed websites that promoted bigotry or hate, etc. so how bad could they really be? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squarespace
This is exactly the problem. I don't go to a domain registrar to be my parent and/or make social decisions for me. I go there to register domains and manage DNS records, that's it. That Squarespace management felt the need to assert themselves into that process with social contagion related matters is deeply concerning and frankly, a deal breaker for me. It'd be like AT&T cancelling your phone service because they didn't like the content of your conversations.
(And you seem really knowledgeable in this space, heh)
>Under the terms of the agreement, Squarespace will honor all existing Google Domains customers' renewal prices for at least 12 months following the closing of the transaction
https://support.google.com/domains/answer/13689670
Google Domains - $12/yr
Squarespace - $20/yr
I still use Gmail, but that’s it for me among Google’s offerings. (I can’t easily transition away from that due to using my email address for several hundred login credentials, though I suppose I really should begin that project.) But certainly for anything new, I have no confidence in any Google products, paid or unpaid.
I was perfectly happy with Gandi until 2016 or so. Political changes in my country made dealing with the EU more complex and potentially more expensive, and I needed to to move my ~100 domain portfolio elsewhere. I originally started looking for a UK domain registrar[1] to keep the UK sales tax (VAT) simple and avoid the credit card fees & arbitrary conversion rate for an overseas transaction. I spent a Saturday or so scouting out options, factoring in:
* purchase and renewal price, with VAT
* overall look and feel of admin panels
* workflow of (and feedback on) transferring domains in and out, and other admin tasks
* how likely the company was to be eaten by another registrar
I've tended to have my web + email stuff split across multiple orgs to reduce instances of single point of failure:
* domains at one registrar, so I can keep track
* DNS at Cloudflare (reliably fastest at DNSPerf), all but one domain is on the the free plan with Cloudflare features disabled (i.e. purely DNS).
* hosting at a build-your-own cloud provider (DigitalOcean and recently Hetzner)
* email at managed provider (Fastmail currently)
Ultimately, UK registrars turned out quite expensive compared to north American registrars, with no clear advantage. Even with the VAT being reclaimable, the sums worked out in favour of looking overseas.
I found Porkbun when I was looking for off-piste domain registrars for a couple of ccTLD domains I had. There's a single .ag which is the most expensive to renew, and comparatively few registrars support it. I ran the numbers on the portfolio of domains for each of the off-piste registrars if I moved all the domains in…and that was expensive.
I told myself I could manage >1 domain registrar if I'm organised, so I re-ran the numbers with a split between the exotic TLDs and the boring ones. I was left with Namecheap & Porkbun for the boring (cheaper) domains. I registered 3x domains at each -- all burners, a ccTLD + a gTLD + their cheapest 99c offering -- and ran some tests. I ignored the SPOF stuff above since these were r&d domains, effectively. The tests included:
* how easy it was to administer via the control panel, including transfers in and out
* testing the support team with a minor, non-documented issue
* how much junk email I'd end up with
* the overall 'feel' of the registrar
Namecheap didn't fare well, sadly. The ccTLD I set up was transferred out (to Porkbun), but remained in the Namecheap control panel. I deliberately chose a .uk domain to test this with, since the process is a little whacky[2]. To their credit, Porkbun handled it seamlessly, exactly as their kb doc explained. Namecheap continued to send my expiry warnings about the domain (which was safe at Porkbun), and a support ticket was not able to have it removed from my account at Namecheap. Minor, granted, but enough to put me off.
Porkbun was mostly better out of the gate. I set up a CAA record on my burner domain (at Porkbun) and it broke DNS completely. I opened a ticket, explained what I'd done, and had a prompt, courteous reply back within a few hours. I'd used the wrong CAA syntax, which clobbered the DNS. When I fixed that, it worked perfectly. This not-in-the-kb support ticket stuff was not planned, but it worked out really well.
I moved all-but-one of my domains to Porkbun. I'd move the .ag domain if they supported it, but they don't yet. The .ag is languishing at Gandi, and there's a support ticket open with them (2 days and counting) to get an auth code to transfer out since it's not shown on the domain control panel, and with their upcoming price changes I'm keen to get that out before the PE folks turn it into a wasteland.
So, Porkbun: it works, they have a good experience that fits my workflow, and they don't have the upselling bullshit that GoDaddy and Namecheap seem...
Thanks to you I've narrowed down to cloud flare and pork in.
Google killing a product should no longer be a surprise to anyone. It’s the opposite of Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition: everybody expects it.
https://killedbygoogle.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spanish_Inquisition_(Monty...
Windows XP incorporated more user-centric elements from 9x, which culminated with ME, into NT.
Windows 8 incorporated more mobile-centric elements from CE into NT.
Windows is still rock solid at running programs from almost 30 years ago.
Google software can only DREAM of doing that. Microsoft was doing software while Google people were still even not planned to be born.
If we consider the start year to be 1981, the year MS-DOS 1 came out, that is twenty years of official, commercial support, if we count 7.1 and 8 that's twenty five years.
If you need software you can count on to still be there a few decades down the line, if not more de facto, count on Microsoft to deliver.
specifically, how are those audio files bought from the M$ mu$ic store when they pulled the plug on the licensing server for their DRM?
your claim of still running on modern Windows would be impressive if it is actually true, but saying to use a completely different OS is not something the vast majority of people not typically reading HN are going to do.
Windows and Microsoft are the legendary backwards compatibility outlier in the software industry where essentially everyone else moves fast and breaks shit.
Incidentally, I still have not come across a suitable replacement for Winamp all these years later. They all have crappy UIs or bring features that I do not want and get in my way.
With a complete RCE like that though, I would definitely not advise playing music downloaded from peer-to-peer networks. While I'm not familiar with the exact requirements to exploit the vulnerability, I would err on the side of caution and assume that music files can be crafted that contain malicious metadata which can achieve similar results without actually being connected to the streaming service.
It's fixed in Winamp v5.52 and above, and the version I use is v5.531 so I'm not affected as it turns out.
I'm sure there are other bugs that I'm affected by, but again: Not really concerned about it.
A comparison shows most products that should be dead are on that list.
G, on the other hand, has products actively used and loved by users.
[1] https://killedbymicrosoft.info/
This Domains shutdown definitely qualifies for the short list though, and is the most mystifying shutdown of theirs in like a decade. It was a paid service with clear strategic importance and clearly a ton of happy customers.
I have stopped using any new Google product, and am slowly phasing out my reliance on their other products.
I watched the recent developments to Twitter, Google and Reddit, and loved it all.
One way for self-hosted service to catch up is to wait for the big companies to mess up, and they're messed up very well at this moment.
Google previously changed their account expiration policy, and decided to lock users out of their usernames instead of allowing the old owner to re-active it, making the expiration permanently destructive for the user.
This effectively told their users that use of Google services is not "maintenance-free", you have to constantly engage with Google to keep it alive. And funny enough... maintenance costs is one of the reasons why people choose to abandoned their soft-host services.
Now the pendulum swings another way, it's great.
Edit: I am located in the US.
Gandi served me well for last 10 years:
* Plenty of zones supported with reasonable prices.
* Have team account access for companies.
* In case of emergency there is an option to renew domains registered with Gandi even without being owner.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36321783
Nonetheless, Squarespace isn't bad but I found their domain pricing to be overpriced to target the specific market that doesn't really care about domain pricing they just want their domain and Squarespace set up at once. I can't see myself sticking around post the grace period mentioned.
That being said, they seem the most stable of the companies in this space that is not otherwise egregiously bad in some way or the other, so I’ve been willing to pay those few bucks more. For the key domains I own it adds up to around $20-$30 more a year which isn’t bad for the greater piece of mind IMO.
*Later edit*: Decided to go ahead and transfer the other domains there, too. Done.
edit: forgot to mention, use code EXODUS to get $1 off three transfers ;)
I'd have to check about the EUR and VAT questions, but my guess is because we can only charge in USD currently it would mean any EUR price we showed wouldn't be "true," since banks ex rate may vary/have added fees.
edit: forgot to mention, use code EXODUS to get $1 off three transfers ;)
Just moved my sole Google Domains domain to Porkbun in literally 6 minutes from account onboarding to transfer completion.
Re: porkbun: A+ work for allowing multiple yubikeys. If anyone else is looking for a registrar that has their security shit together, they seem promising.