News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Google .dev domain early access by CydeWeys on Saturday February 16, 2019 @02:43PM (#19180537)
Hi. I'm the Tech Lead of Google Registry, the team that is launching .dev (not to be confused with the linked Google Domains, which is one of many registrars selling .dev domains to end users).

You'll be glad to know that TLDs can't simply be discontinued like other products might be. ICANN doesn't allow it. The procedures in place preventing a live TLD from shutting down are called EBERO; more details here: https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/ebero-2013-04-02-en

The way it works is that all registries must send daily full backups to a third-party escrow provider, which are then used to restore the TLD under a different operator if the original operator shuts down unexpectedly. This is not some theoretical backup/restore procedure that goes untested; it's been used in the past, e.g. with .wed: https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2017-12-08-en

But this typically only happens when the registry operator goes abruptly bankrupt, and is thus quite rare. Many, many widely used TLDs have been seamlessly sold/transferred across registry operators without you ever realizing it, including .io last year. That would be the "worst" you would expect from TLDs launched by large established players like Google. You actually get a lot more protections with gTLDs than you do with ccTLDs (such as .io), as ccTLDs aren't bound by contract with ICANN and thus aren't forced to do EBERO, or anything else for that matter.

Re:Google .dev domain early access by ldiracdelta on Saturday February 16, 2019 @03:13PM (#19180685)
If I register a domain, can google boot me off it at a later year if they don't like my politics? Or do I own the domain with the continuing option to re-register it or transfer to another domain registrar? Does google ultimately own the domains and simply lease them to me with no guaranteed option to continue?
Re:Google .dev domain early access by OkGoDoIt on Saturday February 16, 2019 @03:17PM (#19180701)
Along those lines, if Google decides I’m a bot or nefarious developer as seems to mistakenly happen on occasion judging from recent hacker news posts, will I then lose my domain name? Or at least access to it? At this point tying any major asset solely to a Google account feels risky.
Re:Google .dev domain early access by jjeaff on Saturday February 16, 2019 @03:48PM (#19180853)
But don't worry, if a mistake happens, I'm sure you can just call Google's customer service and get it straightened out. Ha!
Re:Google .dev domain early access by chipperyman573 on Saturday February 16, 2019 @04:02PM (#19180913)
Paid google products, like google domains, have a 24-hour helpline https://domains.google.com/contactus

I've heard that if you call during the day you get someone who's actually competent, not just some T1 support person.

Re:Google .dev domain early access by peterhadlaw on Saturday February 16, 2019 @06:35PM (#19181642)
Doesn't matter the level of support, the CEO of Cloudflare was involved and still ended up bringing politics into infrastructure.
Re:Google .dev domain early access by slenk on Saturday February 16, 2019 @08:54PM (#19182155)
Who is a good/trustworthy registrar then?
Re:Google .dev domain early access by propogandist on Sunday February 17, 2019 @12:06AM (#19182761)
https://namesilo.com - reliable, cheap & they offer free whois privacy. All they do is sell domains.
Re:Google .dev domain early access by Ayesh on Sunday February 17, 2019 @08:39AM (#19184384)
I couldn't recommend namesilo more! They almost always have the slowest price, very close to what the registry charges them.

Their UI is dead simple and gets things done well and fast.

Re:Google .dev domain early access by auslander on Sunday February 17, 2019 @12:30AM (#19182823)
Amazon Route 53. Full blown registrar.
Re:Google .dev domain early access by gyrgtyn on Saturday February 16, 2019 @10:53PM (#19182585)
cloudflare?
Re:Google .dev domain early access by slenk on Sunday February 17, 2019 @12:14AM (#19182783)
Problem with Cloudflare is that their CEO has taken down a domain for political reasons.

While I agree with him taking the domain down, but what about the next CEO?

Re:Google .dev domain early access by jjeaff on Monday February 25, 2019 @05:24PM (#19250057)
That's just false information. They didn't take any domain down. They stopped offering their CDN/proxying service to a customer. That customer is/was free to host their own content using their own or a different service. No company should be required to offer services to anyone and everyone unless they are the only option on the market. And cloudflare is very far from the only CDN on the market.
Re:Google .dev domain early access by Ayesh on Sunday February 17, 2019 @08:41AM (#19184392)
Unless I'm thinking of something else, it's not a domain registered through CloudFlare. The taken down site was using CloudFlare's reverse proxy service. IIRC, Matthew wrote about the incident in length.

I personally don't use CF for various reasons, but this site take down is not one of them.

Re:Google .dev domain early access by CydeWeys on Sunday February 17, 2019 @09:22AM (#19184568)
Re:Google .dev domain early access by vira28 on Wednesday February 20, 2019 @01:03PM (#19210211)
care to explain this? Thanks
Re:Google .dev domain early access by nikanj on Saturday February 16, 2019 @04:04PM (#19180928)
And would I have any way to actually reach a human at Google, aside from media heat from a Reddit/HN/etc front page story?
Re:Google .dev domain early access by sundvor on Saturday February 16, 2019 @05:35PM (#19181368)
Probably none, going by the track record.
Re:Google .dev domain early access by deadmutex on Saturday February 16, 2019 @06:06PM (#19181512)
It really depends on the product. E.g. if you buy Google Wifi, you can call them or chat with customer support, etc. If you need help with constructing a web search query, not so much.

So, please do not over generalize or compare apples to oranges.

Re:Google .dev domain early access by nikanj on Saturday February 16, 2019 @07:06PM (#19181770)
As a customer, I can't be expected to have a mental model of which Google services come with actual support, and which ones come with Google-it-yourself support.

Comparing Google products to Google products should not be comparing apples to oranges. If Google is frustrated with customers assuming they don't support their products, maybe they should support all of their products, not just a select few.

Re:Google .dev domain early access by vntok on Saturday February 16, 2019 @07:34PM (#19181875)
Ask yourself "Do I pay for this Google product?" If the answer is yes, then the product comes with actual support.
Re:Google .dev domain early access by jlarocco on Saturday February 16, 2019 @08:04PM (#19181976)
They should quote that on the GMail sign up page.
Re:Google .dev domain early access by xvector on Saturday February 16, 2019 @11:13PM (#19182646)
I am frustrated by Google’s lack of support as anyone else, but it is completely unreasonable to expect support for a free product, regardless of how they might otherwise profit off you.
Re:Google .dev domain early access by jlarocco on Sunday February 17, 2019 @02:08PM (#19186197)
I'm not frustrated because I don't rely any Google services.

I was serious, though. People would be less frustrated if they had that helpful reminder on sign up.

Obfuscating that GMail isn't a real product is just another one of their sleazy business tactics, I guess.

Re:Google .dev domain early access by mort96 on Saturday February 16, 2019 @06:40PM (#19181669)
You can't say for sure that any new Google product is guaranteed to have horrible customer support, but you probably should assume that any new Google product has horrible customer support until you see proof of the contrary.
Re:Google .dev domain early access by wlesieutre on Saturday February 16, 2019 @11:48PM (#19182722)
Google Fi’s support might be great. But you have to pay for it through Google Payments which is another potential single point of failure. If you ever trip any of their fraud flags you’ll probably never be allowed to pay for anything through google again, and good luck getting it fixed.

https://onemileatatime.com/google-fi-review/

Re:Google .dev domain early access by sundvor on Tuesday February 19, 2019 @05:12AM (#19197929)
Sorry, but I reserve the right to be cynic. I belong to the old group of people who got to know Google as "do no evil" company, who tossed that to the wind as soon at it suited them better.
Re:Google .dev domain early access by toast0 on Saturday February 16, 2019 @03:54PM (#19180879)
I wouldn't lease the domain through Google domains. Use a different registrar --- if possible, one that you'll be able to trust. That registrar will work with the registry of the TLD, which would be google in this case, and has a much better chance of actually resolving issues than if you were a direct customer of Google Domains.
Re:Google .dev domain early access by panarky on Saturday February 16, 2019 @07:22PM (#19181833)
Now you have two entities who can fuck it up for you instead of just one.
Re:Google .dev domain early access by benologist on Saturday February 16, 2019 @07:28PM (#19181859)
While this is true there are very few reasons why a domain registrar will give you a lifetime ban let alone automatically do it for some perceived TOS crime, let alone refuse to tell you what your alleged misdeed was, let alone automatically reject evidence you submit to the contrary and keep your domains. Imagine the liability!?

Meanwhile someone got their Adsense account banned and in those cases Google refunds the allegedly fraudulent revenue to the advertisers and do not pay you the non-fraudulent revenue. The person who got banned went to court over it because it looked like Google schedules these things to maximize how much they could keep, Google fought for four years to conceal where the non-fraudulent revenue went and then settled for $11 million to keep that shrouded in mystery.

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/adsense-lawsuit/248135/

Note the nobody who will say what happens to your domains when your account is banned despite relevant Google personnel participating in this page, but they have time to detail how we're covered by ICANN if Google with $106+ billion in savings goes bankrupt in thousands of years...

They designed this awful system exactly the way they wanted it to work and they choose to keep it this way, everyone else should probably not use them for domains or web hosting in case yourself or someone associated with your account is irreversibly judged to have committed a TOS transgression somewhere within their empire.

Re:Google .dev domain early access by slenk on Saturday February 16, 2019 @08:55PM (#19182160)
What registrar would you suggest? I have some on Google but I think I want to transfer now.

I also have some on Namecheap, are those safe?

Re:Google .dev domain early access by karlshea on Saturday February 16, 2019 @09:36PM (#19182332)
I've been using https://www.hover.com/ for many years and they're great. Mostly because the prices aren't too bad, the dashboard makes sense, and they never contact me.
Re:Google .dev domain early access by bduerst on Saturday February 16, 2019 @03:41PM (#19180816)
That's a redundant question, because just about every registry can dictate what their TLDs can be used for. It's part of the design laid down by ICANN.

- For Verisign with .com, they don't care if you're really a company or not.

- With Minds & Machines and .law, they only want qualified lawyers, courts, legal schools, etc. using the TLD.

Keep in mind that the registry and registrar are different things.

Re:Google .dev domain early access by prepend on Saturday February 16, 2019 @06:10PM (#19181535)
I think the difference is that Google boots folks off YouTube for political purposes while VeriSign does not kick people away from their .com.
Re:Google .dev domain early access by bduerst on Tuesday February 19, 2019 @03:37PM (#19202545)
Godaddy banned Gab for political reasons as well. While you can split hairs and say that's just a registrar, you can also split hairs and say that youtube is just a hosted content platform. If you're thinking of running another infowars then I would advise avoiding registering domains with any major tech platform in general.
Re:Google .dev domain early access by ldiracdelta on Sunday February 17, 2019 @08:39AM (#19184385)
@bduerst, Forgive my ignorance, but just to distill it down to brass tacks:

In this case, Google is the registry and thus the supreme court of who can and cannot be on this domain and there is no recourse if they yank your claim on the domain?

Is it more nuanced than that?

Re:Google .dev domain early access by bduerst on Tuesday February 19, 2019 @03:32PM (#19202497)
I mean, the entire domain name infrastructure is set up so that someone along the path can revoke registrations, all the way up to ICANN itself.

IME you're much more likely to be banned by the registrar than the registry itself. Registries want people to use their TLDs, so they're not going to reject post-registration unless you've changed how you're using the TLD and it's violating the rules they originally laid down. Registrars are much more consumer facing and will act accordingly - i.e. GoDaddy banning Gab.

Re:Google .dev domain early access by heavyset_go on Saturday February 16, 2019 @07:42PM (#19181899)
Google has a track record of being capricious with bans, whereas other companies do not.
Re:Google .dev domain early access by craftyguy on Sunday February 17, 2019 @11:46AM (#19185320)
And just like that, the 'Tech Lead of Google Registry' has fallen silent.
Re:Google .dev domain early access by benologist on Saturday February 16, 2019 @03:09PM (#19180664)
You talk about the protections ICANN gives your customers in case Google goes bankrupt, but what are the protections or recourse your registry or Google Domains created for your customers to ensure recoverable domains and unimpeded uptime if their Google account is banned?
Re:Google .dev domain early access by longcommonname on Saturday February 16, 2019 @02:53PM (#19180589)
What prevents Google from charging an absurd rate like some of the other TLD or other practices that effectively change the service?
Re:Google .dev domain early access by CydeWeys on Saturday February 16, 2019 @03:15PM (#19180690)
The trend across the gTLD industry has been one of decreasing prices, not increasing prices. I'm not sure what you're referring to?
Re:Google .dev domain early access by cabraca on Saturday February 16, 2019 @03:22PM (#19180722)
i guess he is talking about the premium domains:

> During both the Early Access Program and General Availability, there is a $12/year cost for .dev domains. Annual fees may vary for Premium domains.

Re:Google .dev domain early access by bduerst on Saturday February 16, 2019 @03:47PM (#19180843)
"Premium" domains are resold domains. The prices are typically dictated by the person holding them.
Re:Google .dev domain early access by CydeWeys on Saturday February 16, 2019 @04:15PM (#19180984)
Premium prices are set at the registry level, and for Google's TLDs, are charged annually. The EAP fee is a one time only up-front cost.

Domains being sold by resellers are something different entirely, but yeah, some registrars that participate in reseller networks may lump those in as "premium" as well, which is confusing. Those prices tend to be one-time acquisition costs.

Re:Google .dev domain early access by 18pfsmt on Saturday February 16, 2019 @05:06PM (#19181236)
Because this is your area of expertise, can I ask you why more registrars are not selling 10 or 20 year domain ownership? Who wants a domain for just a year (if you agree with the premise behind individuals owning domains in the first place)?

If I could buy a domain for 50 years, I'd do it.

Re:Google .dev domain early access by CydeWeys on Saturday February 16, 2019 @05:20PM (#19181308)
Most TLDs allow registration lengths up to 10 years. And registrars will happily sell you registration for 10 years. Buy the domain, then immediately renew it for 9 years. I suspect the reason they don't offer a choice of registration years in the initial checkout flow is to reduce purchasing friction -- they don't want you to have to make another choice and then potentially back out of the sale. It's the same reason e-commerce sites will ask you for as little information as they can get away with when checking out your cart; for digital sales many retailers just do zip code instead of full address since they're not shipping anything.

As for longer registration periods than that, I suspect it's the same reason you can't, e.g., call up your cable company and try to pre-pay 50 years of service. They have no idea what things will be like that far down the road, and they don't want to have such longstanding obligations weighing on them.

It comes down to business decisions, not technical issues; technically speaking the spec allows for up to a 99 year registration period, though I'm not aware of any TLDs that support that. https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5731#section-2.5

Re:Google .dev domain early access by Ayesh on Sunday February 17, 2019 @08:47AM (#19184420)
I recently read an HN thread about Romanian ccTLD registry selling domains for lifetime. They have stopped it and asked the former customers to pay up though.
Re:Google .dev domain early access by CydeWeys on Sunday February 17, 2019 @09:24AM (#19184574)
And also ccTLDs can make up whatever rules they want, whereas gTLDs are all bound by the same common set of rules. There are many ccTLDs that don't even use EPP (the spec I linked to above).
Re:Google .dev domain early access by manigandham on Saturday February 16, 2019 @06:39PM (#19181665)
We already have enough sleazy domain squatters holding names for years and trading for ridiculous prices. Instead of long ownerships, we should have some way to prove you're actually using the domain after a certain number of years.
Re:Google .dev domain early access by hombre_fatal on Saturday February 16, 2019 @07:04PM (#19181761)
I disagree. At the end of the day, they are still vanity domain names. Adding more paperwork and process doesn't change that.

For example, pitch a solution that doesn't just make squatters upload some bare bones index.html. Or check a registrar's checkbox to park the domain somewhere with content. Or, well, upload the minimum amount of substance that you think is necessary.

Re:Google .dev domain early access by CydeWeys on Saturday February 16, 2019 @07:20PM (#19181826)
Think about how you could possibly design such a program to ensure use, and how you'd prevent parking site services from cropping up that would make a site just meet the requirements for continuing registration. And if it's not a purely automated process, then the base registration price would have to go way up to pay for all the human work going into validations.

And now imagine the public outcry that can happen every time people have their domains taken from them (rightly or wrongly).

No, no registry wants to be in the business of doing that. You continue to pay for the name, it's yours.

Re:Google .dev domain early access by nanna on Saturday February 16, 2019 @07:47PM (#19181925)
We should stop calling organisations who hog domains in order to accrue an exaggerated profit from them "domain squatters". A real "domain squatter" should be someone who employs the "domain hogger's" domain until the domain hogger decides to actually do something with it themselves.

We wouldn't need such a profusion of TLDs (most of which are awful: .dev is an exception) if real domain squatting was made feasible.

Re:Google .dev domain early access by sliken on Saturday February 23, 2019 @12:34AM (#19231865)
The biggest problem with squatters is that they pay 100x less then you do for a domain. If they had to pay the same price they would squat on way less domains.
Re:Google .dev domain early access by nikanj on Saturday February 16, 2019 @07:17PM (#19181817)
Many of the new TLDs do their own domain squatting. Short, pronounceable domain names are flagged as "premium", and sold at a higher price.

It's a nifty business hack actually, as unlike a 3rd party squatter, the TLD itself has no financial risk in upmarking domains.

Re:Google .dev domain early access by fxfan on Saturday February 16, 2019 @03:24PM (#19180740)
The trend in browsers is being precise about standards and yet only yesterday google took an existing standard and tried to corrupt it.

I'm not trying to be snarky and thanks foe answering questions but this particular comment was a non-answer.

Re:Google .dev domain early access by CydeWeys on Saturday February 16, 2019 @04:13PM (#19180976)
It sounded like they were referring to something specific, but didn't provide examples. I want to know exactly what they're worried about so that I can answer the question, but I haven't been given enough to go on. It sounds like they're worried about prices being jacked up by large amounts, but I'm not aware of that even having happened. Absent that, the current prices are what they are; pay them or don't, but you know what you're getting into.
Re:Google .dev domain early access by nanna on Saturday February 16, 2019 @07:57PM (#19181955)
I think they might be referring to Chrome's upcoming use of &targetText= for linking to specific words or paragraphs, which caused some controversy here yesterday. See:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19168442

Re:Google .dev domain early access by CydeWeys on Saturday February 16, 2019 @08:42PM (#19182112)
I doubt that's it.
Re:Google .dev domain early access by mobiuscog on Sunday February 17, 2019 @11:49AM (#19185331)
Yet here I am about to lose my .eu domain, because of Brexit. I'm paid up for 10 years, but the EU can just change the rules, and I lose my domain.
Re:Google .dev domain early access by longhorn_alum on Saturday February 16, 2019 @09:48PM (#19182383)
> Hi. I'm the Tech Lead of Google Registry, the team that is launching .dev

/remindme! 2 years

Re:Google .dev domain early access by shard972 on Saturday February 16, 2019 @09:30PM (#19182291)
> You'll be glad to know that TLDs can't simply be discontinued like other products might be. ICANN doesn't allow it

Except if your website was the daily stormer.

Re:Google .dev domain early access by CydeWeys on Saturday February 16, 2019 @11:00PM (#19182606)
Daily Stormer never had a TLD. (And no, ICANN never will delegate .nazi)
Re:Google .dev domain early access by ilovecaching on Saturday February 16, 2019 @03:33PM (#19180783)
Hi, just wanted to say how absolutely horrid this entire idea is. Domain name squatting and auctioning is already bad enough, and you're telling me we should give one of the richest companies in the world thousands of dollars for a domain name for development. This is completely counter to the spirit of the internet, and spits in the face of open source and passionate hobby developers who don't have silicon valley stock vesting every quarter. Instead of trying to get these domain names into the hands of real developers at a reasonable price, you're going to sell them to the highest bidders, squatters looking for new investments, and corporations.

Really not at all impressed by this, and it only serves as a stark reminder of the failed state of TLDs.

Re:Google .dev domain early access by jpatokal on Saturday February 16, 2019 @05:08PM (#19181245)
I don't understand the bile here, nor the alternative. Today there are no .dev domains, so anything is an improvement: today you can't use them, tomorrow you can choose to if you think it makes sense.

Re: price, say the .dev registrar decides to offer domains for a hobby-dev-friendly $1 flat fee, first come first served. Wouldn't that just immediately lead to a resale market where predatory squatters register all the domains and extract the market price from anybody who wants one?

Re:Google .dev domain early access by prepend on Saturday February 16, 2019 @06:13PM (#19181548)
I think it’s not cool to offer “early bird” registration for thousands of dollars. So Google is endorsing that rich developers should get the best domain names? How are they reserving for themself?

I think it would be cooler to have programming challenges or something neat.

But a cash grab just seems kind of, lame I guess.

I wouldn’t say I have bile, but I went from “this might be cool” reading the headline to “this is really stupid.”

Re:Google .dev domain early access by Klathmon on Saturday February 16, 2019 @06:38PM (#19181653)
But if you don't think the dutch auction style is a good one, what would your alternative be?

Because the problem of resellers buying up TONS of domain names is a real one, and thus far a dutch auction style seems to be one good way to combat that (since buying 10000 names and selling 10% of them for an overall profit is a LOT more risky when getting them first means shelling out a LOT more money).

A challenge or something would probably drive costs up across the board, and it would still exclude those who want to use the domains that might not be able to complete the challenge (IMO a worse situation), and other methods of "verification" would either be gameable or would exclude many devs.

I don't know of any more "fair" way of allowing people to buy domains. Why should a hobbyist be able to buy "paypal.dev" when potentially thousands of devs could use that domain at paypal, and similarly "klathmon.dev" would be awesome to have for me, and it's pretty unlikely that someone will buy that out from under me with this scheme.

Not to mention that the timeline here is literally half a month. After Feb 28th, there is no additional charge. So we are talking about 2 weeks of waiting.

Re:Google .dev domain early access by boyobo on Saturday February 16, 2019 @09:31PM (#19182302)
In an idealized economic model, "rich developers" will get their desired domain names anyway as they can offer a large sum of money to the "poor developers" to give up their domain name.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_theorem

Re:Google .dev domain early access by 18pfsmt on Saturday February 16, 2019 @05:09PM (#19181252)
I can't tell if your argument is that we should artificially limit TLDs to increase competition? Is that the point you are making?

Literally: "We will create monopolies and increase competition."

Unbelievable.