So I got an invite to use Google Domains, which is Google's new domain registrar service. I have to say that I'm impressed with how smooth and easy the transaction was. I realize that it probably sounds biased coming from me, but you may want to check it out for yourself.
The search mechanism was quick and pretty straightforward -- you enter in the site name you want, and it checks the availability...very similar to other registrars. It makes other suggestions of available names too, nothing shocking there. I liked some .us domains, but found that you can't register them anonymously, so I went with another that seemed ok -- glennwilson.info.
However, the benefit comes from checking out. It was smooth to just say "yep, that's it, I'm done" and put in contact/credit card info, and *poof* done. None of the sneaky upsells or additional charges you normally see with registrars.
Then switching my blog from the standard *.blogspot.com domain over to my new domain was pretty easy too -- I just went to the blog settings, added my new domain under "Blog Address", and then went to my domain account and set up a new CNAME record. This part was kind of awkward and I had to dig for it in the blogger documentation, and stumbled through creating an arcane DNS thingy, but it didn't take more than a few minutes to do.
Next, I might try to get an app engine instance running on the new domain to see how that works. In the meantime, kudos to the Google Domains team for a nice product so far.
