ON GOOGLE ENTERING THE DOMAIN BIZ

COME TOGETHER

As the Associated Press rightfully points out, Google IS joining a crowded field in offering hosted domain name and application services, and is offering,

"...its latest service in a partnership with GoDaddy.com and eNom, two of the many administrators that help Web sites officially register their names under domains like ".com" and "net." Google's service will charge a $10 annual fee and only handle addresses ending in four suffixes — ".com," ".net," ".biz" and ".info."

After personally registering two domain names already with Google this morning, I can attest to the new offering standing a bit apart from the crowd, mostly in the ease and utility of the applications already bundled into the service. 

For a start, Google includes making your registration private in the basic price.  Most other domain name companies, including GoDaddy, Google's partner here, charge extra for that privilege.

Then Google bundles in it's terrific Gmail and Calendar applications, along with the ability for the user to set up over 200 users with those services, and others, on that domain name. 

So for example, one could have a domain for one's family, say "SmithKin.com" for the Smith family, and then set up dozens of folks in the family with email accounts, shared calendar services, and instant messaging all set to go out of the box.

The service even makes it easier to add these dozens of folks by just uploading a spreadsheet with the username and password details.  You can even create an email list with all the new additions, and auto-populate the contact address books for all the new users with all the new emails tied to the domain name. 

Then send an email to all the members of your new domain name, and they're ready to start using their new Google services.  They can also be prompted to enter new passwords on the first log-in to enhance the privacy of their individual service.

One can do much of this through services offered by Yahoo! and others, but they're not as well integrated together (yet), and as easy to set up, share and communicate.

Next step for Google is to market this as something beyond "getting a domain name", which is still unfamiliar to most mainstream folk.

In addition, it's easy to envision Google integrating it's other applications like Picasa, Blogger, Google Earth, etc. into the "Google Apps" included with the service.

It's a great step forward in domain services for the masses.

Who knows, it may even be the most inexpensive and useful holiday gift for a family member or friend this holiday season.

Recommended.

Comments

[cheap domain names]

the thing about google is that they are in everything. they have to money to buy anything. we will see how this works.