Google Domains
Google Domains is being sold off to Squarespace. I received a verbose email about the sale on Aug 15th. The exact timeline was not mentioned. The details of the sale and customer migration are al fairly standard. Unclear what squarespace’s pricing looks like, or if they’ve committed to lock in pricing for transferred customers.
Google has a legendary reputation for killing off products and services. I’ve already been bitten multiple times. My first phone was a Nexus 6p, my friend group in high schools chatted using google hangouts. The loss of hangouts (even though it’s technically still alive and well) was especially felt because it was available everywhere (website, mobile, browser extension, web app) and didn’t need yet another account. Most other chat apps are mobile first. I’ve also used (prefix each service name with google)
- jamboard
- cloud print
- sites
- backup and sync
- cardboard vr
- trusted contacts
- androidify
- inbox by gmail
- goo.gl url shortner
- Save to Google Chrome
- code (git hosting)
I’m only 21, it shouldn’t be possible for a single company to have let me down so much in just a few years. I used google domains because it was so fucking easy. I found a domain, clicked buy, and boom got a nice portal to manage dns settings. I never used any other features. Previously I was hosted at http://hybras.tech/, through a github student discount. However, their web portal was confusing and apparently the registrar was owned by the Saudis. Screenshots of squarespace’s portal do look promising.
Degoogling
Degoogling my life has been very difficult. I don’t want to pay much for storage and self hosting entails sysadmining.
I tried nextcloud on a self hosted raspberry pi with an old hdd, but every part of the system was too much headache.
- Nextcloud needed regular upgrades, a ton of plugins / 3rd party apps. And its php running on apache.
- The rpi frequently crashed and was resource constrained. I eventually fried it because I didn’t have a ups.
- My isp doesn’t have great upload speeds so accessing content remotely was hard
- the drive was slow
Android devices get more locked down by the day. Degoogled phones need workarounds to access many of the same goodies.
I’m going to hit Google’s 15gb free limit on storage in a few years, due to photos. Google’s paid storage plans are very affordable (less that $5/month for 100’s of gb). With an external drive (also affordable) I’d have to worry about backup discipline and maintenance.
I want a fire and forget solution.