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Comment by colinbartlett | Hacker News Reader

Has Google ever "sunset" a product they actually charge money for? That might help us understand what they'd do in this case. But I don't think there's a lot of precedent there.

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Google discontinued (presumably paid) radio and television ads a few months after starting each.

This does seem entirely like a whimsical side project for Google. If you want a reliable domain registrar, find one that doesn't do anything else.

Google is not just a registrar, but a registry, with 19 TLDs that they will operate: https://www.google.com/registry/

They're in the domain business now, and I don't think they're going to drop out any time soon.

I see the first popular attempt to register if .NEWS is available is hacker.news.

> This does seem entirely like a whimsical side project for Google. If you want a reliable domain registrar, find one that doesn't do anything else.

Seems pretty logical to me considering they have a very popular email and cloud business that requires you to have a domain.

Google closing down the radio & tv ads business (c. 2009) was a function more of an acquisition that went badly and an industry that was loathe to change - so imho don't think there's a great corollary here.

Sure, Postini. They basically transferred everyone over to Google Apps. I'm not entirely sure how that worked, though.

So, they have not "sunseted" it, they have transferred it to their other paid services

I don't think new users can sign up for Postini, but they're still supporting it.

Postini support got dropped very recently and on very short notice. It sucked.

Ugh. Sorry to hear that.

Not a lot of precedent, but Wildfire, a Social Marketing Suite they acquired, is one

http://socialmediatoday.com/jordanv/2264086/google-sunsets-w...

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