The search giant Google has entered the domain hosting business by launching a domain-name shop called Google Domains.
The service that has a clean and simple interface, is putting Google in a direct competition with market leader GoDaddy.
First launched to public as a beta release on Tuesday, January 13th, 2015, Google Domains allows anyone in the U.S. to register domain names, at similar prices to competitors.
Google's move into domain hosting business started in 2005 when the company became an ICANN-accredited registrar. And in mid-2014, Google Domains was introduced as an invite-only beta.
Google Domains is the company's way to help small business to build products on the web because, according to its research, 55 percent of small businesses still don't have a website.
Since a domain is a website's foundation, Google Domains is helping more companies to get started with their online presence.
"For businesses especially, picking out the right domain name is often the starting point to building a successful online presence," said Jade Wang, Community Manager at Google.
Simple and Packed with Features
Users that are interested can sign up to get the features. Beside buying, transferring and managing domains, additional features include: email forwarding, ability to customize sub-domains, domain locking, name servers configuration, access to management tools, 10 million nameserver resolutions per year, support (via the web, email, phone, and chat) at no additional cost, and more.
Users will also be provided with private registration at no additional cost, Google said.
At first look, Google Domains is less confusing that GoDaddy. It offers a clean-designed interface with a simple dashboard to help users maintain their website, along with Blogger integration and Google Apps. The service offers templates and a site builder price comparison tool, which includes partners like Shopify, Squarespace, Wix and Weebly. For others users will have to manually set the resource codes.
Google Domains that runs of the company's DNS, offers Dynamic DNS to allow domain names to be assigned to websites served by dynamically assigned IP addresses.
In addition, it's email forwarding and integration with Gmail to simplify the management of custom email addresses.
Hungry and Aiming for More
Since Google Domain is in beta at the moment of its launch to the U.S. public, the company has requested that users provide feedback on their experience in order for Google to be able to improve the product.
Google venturing into the domain hosting business does caught everyone's eyes on the market. The company's technical proficiency, extensive service and huge storage and bandwidth and powerful resources, has made it in a good position to shake and steal market share from others, making it one of the feared tech companies.
GoDaddy is massive, but by seeing Google coming inside its territory, it was enough to make it delay its IPO.
Despite being a powerful company on the web, Google still have disadvantages. The area where GoDaddy is still having an upper hand is in customer service. Furthermore, GoDaddy is by far the biggest registrar that owns 40 percent of the market.
With more than 450 new top-level domains launched since mid-2014, and with hundreds more coming on the list, the journey for Google can be bumpy, and this can put the difference between a success and a failure. To cope with the market's demand, Google said that it's adding new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) regularly.
For Google that have more resources on the web that most others, it's venture in the domain hosting business is not very likely to have been dedicated to income. Google is long known to be data-hungry. From its search engine, apps, social media, mobile operating system and many other services, the company harvests data like almost no others.
With its domain registration service, Google is adding a data-eating service that can collect more data to improve its various of its other businesses, advertising and others.