I remember a few years back I worked for a startup that was all bright eyed for GCP. I warned them that GCP has a history of deplatforming and removing peoples clouds if they feel like it.
They swore that Google would be a kind and just ruler. Weeks later, they were booted from GCP. Never, ever, trust, Google.
Look, I don't want to sound like I'm victim blaming: you are a victim here and Google shouldn't have done this.
However, in the future, if losing your domain incurs "heavy losses by the minute", go with a provider where you can pay for real support, not $10/year on Google domains.
Never use anything made by google if you don’t have to. They don’t care and they don’t have a support team. Your only chance to get anything is by making enough noise that their PR team gets involved or by going to court.
Domains are important(most of the time), I use a registrar which specializes in it. If a company does less than 50% of their revenue in domains, don't use it..
Which one is it? I recently tried to fond an alternative register and was very confused by the offering. Google Domains s product looks and works pretty good
if that was true, you'd have your legal department fix it instead of posting a complaint on Twitter and then cross-posting it on HN to get more traction.
I understand your confusion here, but not all heavy losses by the minute means monetary losses. Losing on client evaluations, SLAs etc that's what I meant here.
But genuine thank you for playing a role in getting us a traction.
When you pay the company for some service and the only way to reach their support is via Twitter, hoping for the best, I'd run away from that company fast as possible. Someone once said, "you are never big enough for Google to notice you", meaning, you can't pay them enough so you can have dedicated 24/7 support by real humans.
People should learn by now that Google's bread and butter is search and ads. Everything else is a second citizen to them.
> you can't pay them enough so you can have dedicated 24/7 support by real humans.
You absolutely can pay them enough to have this. Nearly anyone giving Google $100k+ per year will have a rep assigned.
The problem is the rep is nearly powerless - lots of account problems the rep can't help solve - all they can do is issue refunds/goodwill-compensation in cases like this. They can internally message the team responsible, but in a bunch of cases they can't reverse auto-bans.
I've been avoiding any google product lock in for years now. These ban cases might be rare but i would never trust them enough to build my livelihood on it.
Is it safe to have an Android phone? What if they decide to deplatform your Google account associated with it. What about trusting your number to Google Fi? I have both and I am nervous.
I think there is something to be said for having redundant domains for backend apis for an app, with redundant dns. If one was to go down have the app fall back to the other. Not much help for a web app of e-commerce business though, domains are are one single point of failure that you can’t easily fix.
But it’s one of those things that isn’t mission critical while building a business and so can easily be overlooked. I see redundancy in the backend, or at least a disaster recovery plan that covers single points of failure, the same as normal backup procedures that most of us already do.
I think we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg of this. Imagine how many startups and great, growing ideas have been squashed because Google, Microsoft, Apple, Cloudflare etc. cut them away them in the early stages, and the news of it simply never reaches HN or whatever little corner of the internet we sit in.
Simply unfortunate that one cannot rely on Google for critical stuff. The least one can do is compartmentalization across various Google account and keeping domain names, considering they are at the very root of the infrastructure chain, separate from other activities.
I just [literally in the past hour] had to [unsuccessfully] deal with a Google Fi mess-up while traveling (I made the mistake of running their crappy app on the iPad, which forced me to go through some “activation” steps on first run even though SIM was already active, which in turn disabled my primary SIM and moved the primary line to iPad data SIM). I had to reactivate it on my phone using their app, by deleting and reinstalling, which eventually worked, but left the data SIM on iPad inactive. Support is of no help except to suggest shipping a new data SIM to my primary address, obviously of no help while traveling.
You cannot effectively "compartmentalize" when it comes to Google.
It actively tries to resolve you into one person, most of the time it succeeds. Or worse, you are marked with a false positive.
Yeah, Google is just a bad choice for domain registration, since they have that policy of just ghosting you for support. If you're going to use Google, stick to services where you can route around them if they decide they aren't going to talk to you.
Ehm I am very sorry and not the greatest fan of Google by a long shot, but... who are you? Why should we trust you?
Again I am really sorry but I'm just missing street cred; I only see two new HN accounts and a Twitter account with 79 followers.
Edit: in response to all the comments and downvotes: really, I would not be that hard to convince. How about a LinkedIn page? Glassdoor? An archived version of the site? A personal webpage? A cached Bing search result? Anything, really.
Instead of making that snarky edit, did you try going to Archive.org and looking up the website via the Wayback Machine? Because I did, and there are plenty of captures of the site. Took me probably about the same time or less than it took you to edit yours.
I suppose we'll never figure that out, because his domain is gone. Little bit cynical and circular isn't it, cull the 100 follower people, who will care, they only got 100 followers!
There is a general business lesson here: don’t entrust your critical infrastructure to any provider that does not offer a direct line of communication.
People here stating you shouldn't use Google for domain registration you're partly right, however, what about TLDs owned by them?
I have several .app domains, so there's not really a choice there. One of those is taking off (getting lots of users/visitors) and every year they raise the price to renew it, there's nothing I can do about that as apparently they own the TLD and have the last word on it. I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere in their TsS there's a clause that allows them to take the domain away from me for whatever reason.
Registry intervention isn't that common, unless it affects the domain name itself.
I think the two most common encounters would be UDPR cases and government take down demands. I don't think any TLD owner will bend over backwards to protect the registrant in cases like this. They will just comply and move on.
For Google, though, the worst I imagine is their TLD nameservers using their logs to rank your domains for search results.
Edit: Google has now resolved the issue, and we're up again. Expedited help from Google. Thanks a lot!
Reason mentioned being one of our customer's account was involved in phishing. We're checking this internally.
To Community: Appreciate all your efforts in giving us the traction/momentum. It shows us that there are lots of helpful & caring people in the community, I would love to be of any help to other members in the community, to assist in anyway possible.
Multimedia Knowledge is a new and exciting educational publishing company established to provide the most up-to-date, effective, educationally sound material for 21st Century K-12 students, teachers, and the educational community.
The BioScope Initiative CD-ROMs have been developed at Purdue University by an outstanding group of teachers and educators and was funded by the National Science Foundation, one of the foremost authorities in science and education in America.
None of our apps are working. Google Domains abused locked and suspended our domain lyearn[.]com.
There were no warnings. Support team is doing nothing and of no help. They're not allowing any access to our domain. We can neither transfer registration nor delete and register from elsewhere.
No incoming emails can come(since DNS lookup fails), so customers also cannot contact us.
counter-anecdote: rookie dev left keys in the open, cloud account got hacked, google detected suspicious activity, suspended the account immediately after, we appealed, they responded within the day and vaiwed the extra cost. It was a good day for us.
(Semi-tongue-in-cheek:) If you can pin this on Google being racist against your ethnic group or whatever, you might be able to stir up enough of a scandal on social media to get Google's PR to notice.
Not sure this is such a great course of action, but still probably with a better chance of success than waiting for Google to support you through regular channels.
gabereiser|3 years ago
They swore that Google would be a kind and just ruler. Weeks later, they were booted from GCP. Never, ever, trust, Google.
samwestdev|3 years ago
cmeacham98|3 years ago
However, in the future, if losing your domain incurs "heavy losses by the minute", go with a provider where you can pay for real support, not $10/year on Google domains.
noam_compsci|3 years ago
desindol|3 years ago
mysterydip|3 years ago
jphsnsir|3 years ago
Domains are important(most of the time), I use a registrar which specializes in it. If a company does less than 50% of their revenue in domains, don't use it..
terpimost|3 years ago
radiojasper|3 years ago
if that was true, you'd have your legal department fix it instead of posting a complaint on Twitter and then cross-posting it on HN to get more traction.
croes|3 years ago
$100 is nothing to some but all to others.
priyesh2609|3 years ago
But genuine thank you for playing a role in getting us a traction.
dig1|3 years ago
People should learn by now that Google's bread and butter is search and ads. Everything else is a second citizen to them.
londons_explore|3 years ago
You absolutely can pay them enough to have this. Nearly anyone giving Google $100k+ per year will have a rep assigned.
The problem is the rep is nearly powerless - lots of account problems the rep can't help solve - all they can do is issue refunds/goodwill-compensation in cases like this. They can internally message the team responsible, but in a bunch of cases they can't reverse auto-bans.
johnywalks|3 years ago
cft|3 years ago
samwillis|3 years ago
But it’s one of those things that isn’t mission critical while building a business and so can easily be overlooked. I see redundancy in the backend, or at least a disaster recovery plan that covers single points of failure, the same as normal backup procedures that most of us already do.
lizardactivist|3 years ago
mehrdada|3 years ago
I just [literally in the past hour] had to [unsuccessfully] deal with a Google Fi mess-up while traveling (I made the mistake of running their crappy app on the iPad, which forced me to go through some “activation” steps on first run even though SIM was already active, which in turn disabled my primary SIM and moved the primary line to iPad data SIM). I had to reactivate it on my phone using their app, by deleting and reinstalling, which eventually worked, but left the data SIM on iPad inactive. Support is of no help except to suggest shipping a new data SIM to my primary address, obviously of no help while traveling.
code51|3 years ago
tyingq|3 years ago
terpimost|3 years ago
ddevault|3 years ago
prof-dr-ir|3 years ago
Again I am really sorry but I'm just missing street cred; I only see two new HN accounts and a Twitter account with 79 followers.
Edit: in response to all the comments and downvotes: really, I would not be that hard to convince. How about a LinkedIn page? Glassdoor? An archived version of the site? A personal webpage? A cached Bing search result? Anything, really.
jjulius|3 years ago
Instead of making that snarky edit, did you try going to Archive.org and looking up the website via the Wayback Machine? Because I did, and there are plenty of captures of the site. Took me probably about the same time or less than it took you to edit yours.
https://web.archive.org/web/20180701000000*/lyearn.com
sanxiyn|3 years ago
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shuchitgandhi
Barrin92|3 years ago
I suppose we'll never figure that out, because his domain is gone. Little bit cynical and circular isn't it, cull the 100 follower people, who will care, they only got 100 followers!
hulitu|3 years ago
croes|3 years ago
rwalle|3 years ago
I only have something like 3 followers but I don't post fake stuff
Meanwhile people with millions of followers post misinformation all day long
Has it ever occurred to you that the number of Twitter followers means absolutely NOTHING?
johnywalks|3 years ago
glowupbot|3 years ago
hrbf|3 years ago
moralestapia|3 years ago
I have several .app domains, so there's not really a choice there. One of those is taking off (getting lots of users/visitors) and every year they raise the price to renew it, there's nothing I can do about that as apparently they own the TLD and have the last word on it. I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere in their TsS there's a clause that allows them to take the domain away from me for whatever reason.
Ayesh|3 years ago
I think the two most common encounters would be UDPR cases and government take down demands. I don't think any TLD owner will bend over backwards to protect the registrant in cases like this. They will just comply and move on.
For Google, though, the worst I imagine is their TLD nameservers using their logs to rank your domains for search results.
priyesh2609|3 years ago
Reason mentioned being one of our customer's account was involved in phishing. We're checking this internally.
To Community: Appreciate all your efforts in giving us the traction/momentum. It shows us that there are lots of helpful & caring people in the community, I would love to be of any help to other members in the community, to assist in anyway possible.
Thanks & Regards
radiojasper|3 years ago
Expires On: 2023-02-23
Registered On: 2015-02-23
Updated On: 2022-09-11
[0] https://who.is/whois/lyearn.com
I would love to see what you were hosting on this website that made google suspend your domain like that.
riedel|3 years ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20041127043041/http://www.ylearn...
Multimedia Knowledge is a new and exciting educational publishing company established to provide the most up-to-date, effective, educationally sound material for 21st Century K-12 students, teachers, and the educational community.
The BioScope Initiative CD-ROMs have been developed at Purdue University by an outstanding group of teachers and educators and was funded by the National Science Foundation, one of the foremost authorities in science and education in America.
prfssnl|3 years ago
yashodhanmohan|3 years ago
None of our apps are working. Google Domains abused locked and suspended our domain lyearn[.]com. There were no warnings. Support team is doing nothing and of no help. They're not allowing any access to our domain. We can neither transfer registration nor delete and register from elsewhere.
No incoming emails can come(since DNS lookup fails), so customers also cannot contact us.
tpxl|3 years ago
Damn, that is shit. I can understand removing the domain and letting you transfer, but holding your domain hostage is just another level of evil.
joshenders|3 years ago
nurettin|3 years ago
midislack|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
97amarnathk|3 years ago
priyesh2609|3 years ago
einpoklum|3 years ago
Not sure this is such a great course of action, but still probably with a better chance of success than waiting for Google to support you through regular channels.