Trying to register our .dev now and it's been spinning for the last 10 minutes... I guess there's a lot of demand for these?

I'm in the same boat right now. Not sure if it's organic demand, or if the Bots were set free to start registering domains now that the early access fee is gone.

I had to register through NameCheap since Google's registrar looks like it's being hugged to death.

Crazy how many common nouns are already taken. People are rushing to squat on these.

Registered the same domains on namecheap 30 minutes after checking out on google domains. They were still available. Google domains is still spinning trying to register the domains.

Correction -- the domains aren't free. They're in the neighborhood of $12-20/yr (including first year) depending on registrar, for non-premium domains.

Cue the 501 error when checking out...

I had to use Porkbun.com after 2 failed registrations at Google domains.

It's 12€ for me here in Spain.

domains.google site is super slow, and checkout is broken. Registration after checkout is also broken.