https://arstechnica.com/google/2023/09/google-domains-halts-registrations-as-it-waits-for-the-google-grim-reaper/
The transition to Squarespace apparently started a few days ago.
ive already transfered the domains i care about away from google domains. no thanks squarespace.
Really curious what the internal rationale was. I doubt they had more than a handful of people on the product and it was probably a free money generator.
Was actually kind of nice. A straight forward UI with reasonable prices.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Google announced in July that the service was getting shut down and that it had struck a deal with Squarespace to sell off the existing customer base.
Part of that transition process means winding down the existing Google Domains functionality.
9to5Google was the first site to notice that you can no longer buy a domain through the service while it waits for the Google Grim Reaper to arrive.
For a while, it was a great service, with a clean, easy-to-use interface that stood in contrast to many domain registrars, especially in the early days.
Free Google products die all the time, but this was a paid service, and it's hard to imagine selling domains for $12 a year wasn't a profitable business.
lets people make a website; since you'll need a domain to put that on, why not buy one through Google?
The original article contains 391 words, the summary contains 142 words. Saved 64%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I've moved mine to both cloudflare and porkbun. Pretty easy, almost instant. Didn't even cause my site to go down which was good.