Google Domains has been sold to Square Space, and has thus once again killed off a product that I used on a daily basis. The first Google product I can remember being killed off while still popular was Google Reader. At the time it seemed odd that they killed off something that tons of people used. It was free, but many of Google’s offerings were free and still are. The press at the time was equally flummoxed, as they are now after the demise of Domains.
A year ago I didn’t have anything to do with Domains. As this project progressed and I needed a domain, I went with Google because I already had an account and it was just easy. This, despite the fact that much of the impetus of this project is moving away from Google. Well, now that they’ve announced the transfer of all domains to Square Space, I’m taking my now four domains to Cloudflare.
As an aside, my contract with Host Gator ended a week ago. Adampdx.com was the first domain to get transferred to Cloudflare. I migrated my email service to Proton Mail, so now I have a completely new setup, and as far as I’m concerned, I’m now 100%* self-hosted**. The Cloudflare switch has not gone without issue, though. Right now dumbleigh.com works (don’t know why) but my other domains that are set up the same way don’t. Not sure what’s happening there, but in the past few weeks I have changed several security settings….
7/3 update I found something else to occupy my mind for the moment and stopped writing two days ago… I think. The Cloudflare switch has been difficult, and just now I was able to get dumbleigh.com working again after a day of not working (no subdomains, yet).
This has been a troublesome journey, and I remember similar feelings trying to get this site on line in the first place. I got through those issues, so I’m hopeful that I can move past this issue. Soon, all four of my domains will be live and I’ll be free of Google***!