Google Now A Domain Registrar
According to ICANN, Google is now an official registrar of web addresses. Does this mean we will be able to register domains through Google for little or no money? Get our own domains for Gmail accounts? Get domains for Blogger blogs? Or maybe just free domains as a loss leader for AdSense pages? Considering domains cost registrars only $6 a year, Google could make decent money offering them for practically nothing, or even nothing at all. Rampant speculation at Slashdot, others.
UPDATE: The Register says:
The reason it paid a $2,500 application fee and $6,500 to cover six top-level domains is that it “wants to get a better understanding of the domain name system [and so] increase the quality of our search results”. The email address it gives with relation to its new registrar status is dns-admin@google.com.Google notes that Amazon did exactly the same thing nearly two years ago. At that time, a March 2003 article in the Wall Street Journal pointed out that the online giant had become a registrar and assumed that it was about to launch a domain name selling business. It set the industry off - but we are still waiting, 47 months later.
(via P2Pnet.net)
Actually registrars that do bulk purchases can purchase domains for less then $6/yr.
I somehow doubt them offering free domains. I could see them offering them in the $5-6/yr range though.
Comment by Matt | February 1, 2005
[…] You can see it on the list of accredited domain name registrars: As of Halloween of this year, Microsoft is an ICANN accredited registrar. On October 31, Microsoft became a registrar of .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, .name and .pro domains. Google became a registrar last year, in order to improve search results with data about domain registrations, and Microsoft may be doing the same. They may also be doing it as a more efficient way to handle all the domain registrations for Office Live. (via ICANN Watch > Digg) […]
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