Google’s Domain Registrar Expands, Now Works With Google Apps

Google is today expanding its efforts with its newer domain registry service, Google Domains, announced earlier this year. The service, which represents Google’s initial foray into selling website addresses itself, competes with thoseĀ from NameCheap, GoDaddy and others, by offering individuals and businesses in the U.S. an easy way to grab your own web address, while also integrating with Google’s products – like by forwarding domain email to Gmail, for example.

Now the company is broadening the feature set for Google domains to include a few more requestedĀ options, like the ability to transfer domains or set custom emails which then integrate with Google Apps. In addition, over 90 more domain endings have been made available.

The new domains include several that are applicable to the businesses Google wants to serve with Google Domains, like .life, .world, .business, .cool, .pizza, .gifts, and .football, among others. The pricing for the domains themselves is determined by which top-level domain is selected, and range from $12 per year for a .com to as high as $120 for some specialized domains like .accountants, .credit and .energy, for example.

blog1 (1)

Included with domain registration are a number of options, such as free private registration, free domain forwarding, support for up to 100 sub-domains, free email forwarding to Gmail, phone support and more.

Before its public launch this year, Google Domains had been in testing with thousands of users, but now the company says that users have registeredĀ “hundreds of thousands” of domains and created “tens of thousands” of websites, to date, many that are for their businesses.

With the new option to create custom email addresses, Google Domains is now integrated with Google Apps for Work – a significant expansion for the service that makes sense, given Google’s intentions in terms of the user base it wants to reach (i.e. businesses). With this feature, Google Domains users will be able to create emails like you@yourdomain or sales@yourdomain, for example, through Google Apps.

This service will be added on as an optional upgrade for $5 per month, and includes access to the full Google Apps for Work productivity suite. That means users can access Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Drive (with 30 GB of storage), Hangouts, Sheets, Sites, and Slides. As this is also the entry-level cost for Google Apps for Work, it’s more like Google is using the domain integration option as a way to funnel new users to its online office suite.

blog2 (1)

Currently, the Google Domains service is available at google.com/domains, but we’re hearing that Google will be adding a little domain pizzazz of its own to the GoogleĀ Domains URL in the future. That is, the company will be building out the product on its own “.google” domain in the weeks ahead.

That will make Google Domains one of theĀ first public properties to be hosted on “.google,” following the quiet arrival of www.registry.googleĀ just a few weeks ago. (Oh, and Google also temporarily used “com.google” during its April Fool’s Day prank!) Stay tuned.