Google Domains Sold To SquareSpace

It has now been confirmed that Google has sold it Domain registration business to SquareSpace.

This I’m sure will come as a surprise to some but not to those that are in the Domain Registration business.

Google has a habit of starting new business ventures and when they don’t make the money they expect the either close it down or sell it off (I would like to state this is my own opinion and I have nothing against Google, I have a Google account and do use their services).

Making money from domain registrations is not an over night venture, it takes time and effort.

Now Google has a massive customer base and massive reach but selling something at base cost or below market rates when you still have the costs of supporting the infrastructure behind this can only lead to one thing – an unviable business model (Once again I’m not privileged to know Google buy price for each domain or the running cost of their infrastructure but its my best guess).

SquareSpace have said that they will offer the same renewal price for 12 months, but when you look at the pricing of SquareSpaces domain names against the rest of the market you can expect this to rise sharply. On average SquareSpace is nearly double the price for a .uk domain and nearly 3 times to price compared to us at redIT Hosting.

I would expect people to start migrating their domains to over registrars as and when the renewals come up. That said some people just don’t check the price they are paying each time the domain comes up for renewal.

You can read the full article posted by SquareSpace here https://domains.squarespace.com/ and the press release from Google here https://support.google.com/domains/answer/13689670?hl=en-GB