Domain Registration Tips

tldr: If you can, just stick to .com, .net, .org or the ccTLD of your country. or the ccTlD managed by Google(.app, .dev), Radix or Donuts.inc.

recommended domain registras:

I worked in the domain name industry for 4 years. Be careful which TLD you rent (you never buy it). If it’s free, it’s a bad deal, just don’t take it. If it’s a ccTLD (2 characters) not of your own country, don’t take it. Eligibility rules routinely change and you could get kicked out overnight. UK residents lost eligibility to .eu with Brexit for instance. Be careful with sexy ccTLDs such as .io or .so, they belong to small countries which sometimes don’t have a proper resilient infrastructure, and you expose yourself to more DNS issues. A lot of new gTLDs (ie. tlds other than .com, .net, .org and .info) suck ass and were created by speculators. Be very careful. I would only buy a gTLD managed by Google (.app, .dev), Donuts.inc , or Radix. Most of the other crap is not reliable enough to me.

If you can, just stick to .com, .net, or the ccTLD of your country.

.ch is owned by a foundation called “SWITCH”.

That’s not entirely true. What happens for ccTLDs is that they’re owned by the government, and administrative and technical management of the extension is delegated to a foundation/association. In the example of France (I’m French so I know it best), the .fr has been managed by the Afnic historically, but it’s renewed every few years (5 I think?) by the government. Last time was 2021.

In the case of ccTLDs you need to trust the associated government no matter what, more than the delegated registry.

.net might be a bit less sexy than .com but both are managed by Verisign, which is probably the most reliable registry nowadays. They both suffer from the same price increases for the wrong reasons, but you get the peace of mind IMO. Good choice!

Google suspended our domain out of the blue – lyearn.com

This story relates to Google Domains, the registrar entity of Google, not the registry entity.

I would personally never trust Google as a registrar because they have a horrible track record regarding customer support. As a gTLD registry though, they’re supervised by the ICANN and just cannot afford to make a shitty job there. Being a registry is also, IMHO, way easier than being a registrar, you obey ICANN rules, but you’re the one setting the rules for the registrars. Google as a registry is fine. You’re free to not trust them either as a registry, but that would be for personal convictions, not objective.

ccTLD (2 characters, are usually managed by countries, except for .eu and maybe a handful of other exceptions) do not follow ICANN’s rules. Governments are owners of the TLD of their own country, and set the administrative rules.

On the admin side, you’re trusting the countries to not change the rules against you. It’s probably not a good idea to rent a .ru if you’re Ukrainian for example. You’re also trusting them regarding a part of the DNS resolution: a DNS query first goes by the root DNS, which will resolve the TLD to the registry’s DNS server, which will resolve the domain to the registrar’s DNS servers, which will do the rest. The registry could theoretically override your records on their layers. So same thing, don’t use a ccTLD you don’t trust (that’s true of all TLDs, but even more for ccTLDs). On a technical side, some countries have crappy infrastructures, so resolution is at risk. It happened to Notion a few months ago with their .so domain (Somalia). Some poor countries delegate the technical side of operations to more reliable registries.

Google is safer because it only manages gTLDs. They can set part of the rules, but not all the rules. They have to follow ICANN’s rules. In particular, the dispute process goes through the ICANN which gives a somewhat neutral safety net. It’s far from perfectly, probably not even good enough, but still gives you more warranties than using a random ccTLD.

Speculators bought newGTLDs in the hope of selling tons of them but often dramatically failed. Registering a gTLD to the ICANN costs at least $400,000 if I remember well, so a lot of crappy newGTLDs are not profitable. When the registry goes bankrupt, I don’t know what happens to the customers. My guess is the ICANN tried to re-sell the TLD management on auction, and if they fail, then people would lose their domain. Very few newGTLDs succeeded, I’d stick with these and not try anything fun but too exotic.

While on a com, net, org the US government can take your domain from you at any moment for any reason?

That’s not the case. The ICANN is an entity independent from the US. Well, that’s not entirely true, but true enough that the US can’t just take a .com from someone just like that.