Breaking News: Squarespace Buys Google Domains… Almost 😉 Update June 19, 2023

Squarespace announced on Thursday, June 15th, that it intends to buy Google Domains. Consider this the tech version of Add To Cart.

What does this mean for those of us who use Google domains and us Squarespace fans? In this episode of ThinkInsideTheSquare, we'll skip the speculation and cover the facts.
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Here are my sources of info for this episode:
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❓ So let’s kick this quick episode off with the biggest question of them all - what is Squarespace buying?
Squarespace is trying to purchase Google Domains, a branch of Alphabet inc that includes about 10 million domains currently hosted on Google Domains spread across millions of customers, including me.

❓ “Intent” isn’t official - when is this purchase actually going to take place?
Here's the deal - The whole transaction thing is set to go down in the third quarter of 2023. But it's not a done deal just yet. We gotta wait for those fancy regulatory approvals and all those regular closing conditions to fall into place. So when is the official date? No one is sure just yet but everyone is planning on this taking place before the end of the year.

❓ What does it mean for your Google domains?

❓ What will happen to my domain when the switch is official?
Your domain name registration and DNS delegation will stay intact when you switch over to Squarespace - it will be automatic. And here's the best part: once you become a Squarespace customer, you'll have the freedom to handle other cool services (if they're available) right from their management console.

❓ Will the price of Google domains renewal change?
The “definitive agreement” between Google and Squarespace includes assurances that customers will get the same renewal prices available to them for the next 12 months. Plus, Squarespace agrees to provide “incentives” for customers to build their website with the company’s platform.

❓ What does it mean for your Squarespace websites?
Nothing as far as we can tell - Squarespace is acquiring a ton of domains from Alphabet inc. but all of the announcements have been about that; nothing about Squarespace.

Again, once they get those thumbs-up from the regulators and everything's officially sealed, Squarespace is gonna take charge of handling the billing and support services for Google Workspace (including G Suite) subscriptions. Right now, Google Domains is taking care of that, but after the transition, it's all gonna be in Squarespace's hands. During a transition period, your customer and billing info will be gradually migrated over to Squarespace, with only a few exceptions. Once that's done, your Workspace subscription that was previously billed by Google Domains will be managed in your Squarespace account and billed by them. Just to be clear, this won't affect any Workspace subscriptions that were directly billed by Google Workspace or other Workspace resellers.

❓ When will we know more?

I hope you appreciated this quick update episode of Think Inside the Square.

I have a lot more tips and tricks to share with you about making an amazing Squarespace website that is uniquely yours, so be sure to subscribe to this podcast wherever you happen to be listening to this episode.

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[belindalong]

Pretty smart acquisition on Squarespace's part – making it easy and streamlined for us SS lovers, and making it difficult to avoid using SS if you're less inclined to use the platform! 😭Cheers for the update Becca, appreciate it🙌🏼

[SkyLensStudios]

My big question is - what happens to my site I built using google sites, from what I can read it looks like I have to build a new site using SS, and I don’t want to use workspace as I use email forward to my personal gmail account, but email forwarding is not yet set up with SS. So I know they want it to be as seamless as possible, but it’s going to require effort in my part. Effort I didn’t want to have to do!

[petercowan]

I have a Google-Domains Domain, and a Wordpress site. Am I going to be forced to use Squarespace?