Google now ICANN registrar
p2pnet.net News:- Google is now an ICANN-accredited registrar of domain names able to sell in top-level domains (TLDs) .com, .net, .org, .biz., info, .name and .pro, “providing it with yet another potential line of expansion,” says Britain’s Netcraft.
But, says The Register, Google has no current plans to actually sell any.
The reason it paid a $2,500 application fee and $6,500 to cover the TLDs is it, “wants to get a better understanding of the domain name system [and so] increase the quality of our search results,” says the story.
Google’s registrar status, first noted by LexText, is likely to prompt speculation about its ambitions in web hosting and blogging, says Netcraft, going on:
“Google operates Blogger, the free blog hosting service with a huge user base. Cheap or free domain names could prove useful to Google in the notoriously price-sensitive blog hosting sector, where most bloggers use subdomains (i.e. myblog.bloghost.com) rather than full domain names (www.myblog.com).
“Domain sales have also become an important tool in the business hosting market, where domain registrations have surged in the past 18 months, even as prices have dropped steadily. Hosting providers like Hostway, EV1Servers, Interland and Yahoo have used cheap domains to attract hosting customers.”
But, Netcraft says, there’s a differnce.
These four companies buy their domains from wholesalers such as Tucows, Go Daddy or Melbourne IT, and have a minimum per-domain cost, usually at least $6.50.
“Rather than viewing domains as a for-profit business, these providers have approached domain sales as a marketing cost. A recent survey by The Web Host Industry Review found that the keyword phrase “web hosting” was selling for $7.70 per click on Google AdWords and $9.02 on Overture. Not all of those clicks will become new customers, either, making a $1 or $2 loss on a domain sale seem like an affordable way to acquire a customer.”
Google may not be planning on selling domain names at the moment, but if it ever changes its mind, “As a registrar, Google could have … flexibility to aggressively price its domain names,” says Netcraft.
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See:-
No. 2 browser – accredited registrar, Netcraft, January 31, 2005
no current plans – Google becomes domain name seller, The Register, February 1, 2005
