Another headstone in the google graveyard. This one doesn't make any sense to me, either, unless there are weird regulatory issues they want to avoid since it seemed like a very popular registrar. Or maybe they just didn't want to staff any limited customer support team.
I'm also confused, it's a paid product! If it wasn't making enough money, why didn't they just raise the price? It already wasn't the cheapest name registrar, so I don't think people were selecting it solely based on cost (I went with it because of the free 100 email aliases included, but others liked the clean layout and simplicity compared to some other options.)
I get why they kill free things that don't make them money, but it seems very strange with a paid product, especially when, as others have said, they have GCP, which will presumably require a third party registrar in the future.
It's not a traditional "paid product" where you can reduce cost, increase efficiency and/or take advantage of economy of scale. There are foxed ICANN fees per domain, most registrar add a markup on that, sell ownership data, auction popular expired domains, squat good names, etc. Google Domains (and Cloudflare) main spiel is they sell domains at cost as they make their money else where. It was intentionally a business that was never meant to make money.
It wasn't "the cheapest registrar" because they didn't offer "signup deals", just like cloudflare. Other cheaper registrar offer a signup deal for $1 or $2 a domain (subtext: renews for $24 dollars the next year)
