> But Google was at fault for not correcting their blacklist.
If all it takes to be taken from the blacklist was to temporarily delete the NS record - the list would be useless against malware.
Not just .online, also any other domain Radix hosts. At least not for anything important.
What stands out to me:
> Earlier this year, Namecheap was running a promo that let you choose one free .online or .site per account.
I wouldn't be surprised if most of Namecheap's customers who used the "register a domain for free" discount were indeed malicious. Without seeing the results of whatever analysis Google did to flag this website, it's hard to say whether Google is at fault here.
And Google has the right to publish a list, there should be more lists not less. But Google was at fault for not correcting their blacklist. Until the article appeared on Hacker News, this was not 0% on Google. A small, correctable mistake, but they deserved a tiny bit of blame.