Last One Into The Pool: Google Offers Web Site Registration (GOOG)

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Dec 15, 6:15AM EST

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For reasons that would be unclear to almost any observer, Google is entering the business of web site addresses. The company says that it is motivated by its ability to offer customers web-mail, calendar, and instant messaging software. Google will offer the service in partnership with GoDaddy and another registration firm. In other words, the core feature of registering domain names will not even come from Google.

Google may not be the last company to enter the domain business, but it will be close. The idea that the program will help Google distribute its other software products may make a vague kind of sense, but it is difficult to see how the company will pick up many new customers in such a crowded market.

Maybe the new domain registrations can come with access to Google Earth.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.