saas

Google Domains

domains.google | Shut down September 7, 2023

A domain registrar customers trusted, sold out from under them.

What it did

Google Domains was a domain registration and management service with clean pricing, included privacy protection and tight integration with other Google services.

The facts, as reported

Google announced in June 2023 that it had agreed to sell its domain registration business to Squarespace. Customer domains were migrated to Squarespace, and Google Domains was wound down as a Google product.

Google Domains (Wikipedia)
reporting | 9/7/2023
"Google agreed to sell its domain registration business to Squarespace in 2023 and wound the product down."

Marketur analysis, not fact

Nothing failed technically. Customers simply woke up as someone else's customers, on someone else's pricing and terms. When a service is a small side business for a large company, divestiture is a live risk even when the product is good.

What to take from it

A non-core product at a big company can be sold, not just killed.
Migration means new pricing, new terms and new support you did not choose.
Own the boring critical layer or know exactly who does.