On June 15, 2023, Squarespace announced its intent to purchase domain registrations and related customer accounts from Google Domains. The deal is reportedly worth $180 million dollars and potentially affects millions of customers.
Google is reporting that there will not be an immediate impact to Google Domain accounts and Squarespace says they will honor all existing customers’ renewal prices for at least 12 months.
Google domains will be joining a growing list of services stopped by the company. It is not yet clear what will happen to employees working for Google Domains.
Squarespace is a website builder, blogging platform, and hosting service founded in 2003 which has traditionally focused on low or no code website building and blogging.
Update sent out by Google on August 15th 2023.
Squarespace recently announced that it entered into an agreement to purchase all domain name registrations and related customer accounts from Google Domains. As a valued customer we wanted to make you aware of the following important information.
What happens now?
There is nothing you need to do at this time. Your domain will continue to operate and be managed by Google until it is time to move to Squarespace. That won’t happen until after the transaction closes and the migration process begins, which will likely take place over the next few months.
What happens next?
All customers will be moved to Squarespace Domains in the coming months. You will be notified once your domain has moved. Squarespace Domains is an independent domain registrar service provided by Squarespace.
Squarespace has publicly committed to continue to utilize Google Cloud DNS infrastructure, meaning reliability and performance regarding DNS will remain unchanged during the migration.
The purchase is currently subject to regulatory approval and other customary closing conditions. Upon the closing of the transaction, your domain account will be owned by Squarespace but you will continue to manage your domain(s) via Google Domains as you do today, with Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service continuing to apply.
Learn more about Squarespace’s plan for domains here.
Squarespace and Google are committed to a seamless transition. For a limited period of time post-close until your account is migrated to Squarespace, your account will be managed by Squarespace utilizing Google’s infrastructure. After this migration period Squarespace will be solely responsible for providing domain services to you. During the migration period after the closing of the transaction, your customer and, if applicable, billing information will be migrated to Squarespace. Upon migration – which will be at least 30 days from today – your data will be governed by Squarespace’s Privacy Policy and Squarespace’s Terms of Service will apply. Additionally, if you have a Google Workspace subscription billed by Google Domains, billing and support services for such subscription will be transitioned to Squarespace. Following closing of the transaction, you will receive instructions from Squarespace on how to manage your domain(s) via a Squarespace account (including DNS, WHOIS, and renewal settings).
You will continue to have the ability to transfer your domain(s) to another registrar prior to such migration or at any time thereafter.
In the meantime, if you need help with anything related to your domain please contact us. You can also learn more about Squarespace here.