Several days ago it was learned that Google became an ICANN-approved domain name registrar. Speculation about what this means has been flying around the Internet.
An article on News.com states the Google point of view: “Eileen Rodriguez, a Google spokeswoman, hardly quelled the speculation by explaining that the whole thing was really a learning opportunity for the company. Google “has become a domain name registrar to learn more about the Internet’s domain name system,” she said recently in an e-mail message. “While we have no plans to register domains at this time, we believe this information can help us increase the quality of our search results.”
One piece of speculation is that Google wants to gain information on expiring domain names so when a domain name changes hands they do not continue to serve up irrelevant information.
Another piece of speculation on my own part is that perhaps Google, in part, wants to gain Whois information so that they may tie together single owners who buy multiple domains and put up multiple websites, then link them together in order to get a boost in the SERP’s. Of course this could be just another Google conspiracy theory, but what the heck. I’m happy to throw this one on the pile as well.
In any event, the fact that Google stays silent about specifics leads to many interesting theories. Perhaps even Google will learn some interesting angles on how to use their registrar status just from pondering some of these theories.
