Google launches .google

Google has joined the increasingly long list of companies running their own pieces of the internet with the launch of domains.google.

It points to Google's relatively new service where people can buy domain names and tie them to various Google services such as hosting and email. Previously it the service was run from Google's dot-com domain.

It's not the first .google address: the search giant was obliged to set up a nic.google address when the top-level domain went live. It also launched registry.google for its registry business and ran an April Fools joke last year at www.com.google. It is however the most prominent.

Of the nearly 2,000 applications for new dot-word internet domains, 34 per cent of them came from big brands like Amazon, Ferrari, Lego, Intel, Heinz, and so on. A few brands have tentatively started using their own internet address but most are still sitting on their names until they can figure out what best to do.

Google's new domains.google represents the first time a new brand domain has been used for business rather than information. ®