Google loses ownership of URL blogspot.in; over 4.4 million users affected
People who post on the blogging platform are facing issues and not able to gain access to their blogs. This is because Google has lost rights to the URL blogspot.in.
The blogs, however, are visible when users change their existing URLs to blogspot.com, but the major issue is that more than 4.4 million blog users who were using links with the Blogspot.in domain on various websites now have broken domain links.
According to Next Web, who ran a WHOIS query, Google no longer owns the Blogspot.in domain. It is not exactly clear when Google lost control over the domain. Regular blog users with blogspot.in can use their domains as for now.
However, from a WHOIS search, the domain name blogspot.in seems to have a new domain service provider. It shows that Domainming.com has now acquired the domain name Blogspot.in.
Domain Name: blogspot.in
Registry Domain ID: DE2DC9C0E8E694C28ADEF0F444F121B45-IN
Registrar URL: www.domainming.com
Updated Date: 2020-06-29T20:00:06Z
Creation Date: 2020-06-24T20:00:05Z
Registry Expiry Date: 2021-06-24T20:00:05Z
Domain Status: inactive
It's surprising Google let the domain name lapse given that renewing the domain name shouldn't cost much. Currently, it's not clear whether Google is already in talks with the current domain owner.
Blogspot.in was part of Google-owned Blogger, which was previously known as Blogspot. As per a report by Neowin, country-specific domains are not different blog addresses but just a redirect based on the country where the blogger is living. When a user searches within India, he will get a domain with username.blogspot.in as against username.blogspot.com.
Country-specific domain names were brought about by Blogger in February 2013, to remove content that would violate local data protection law. This would also allow the company to comply with take-down requests for content hosted on the platform faster and more securely.
However, Google didn't address the issue and didn't notify users about losing its ownership over Blogspot.in, according to the report.
Blogging has become both a trend and a profit-making business. Many active bloggers use their profiles as work samples.
Google loses control of the ‘Blogspot
Google loses control of the ‘Blogspot
.in’ domain, breaking millions of websites
Google’s free Blogger tool makes it easy for anyone to start their own website, but the platform is undergoing some issues in India this week. Somehow, Google unfortunately let the “Blogspot.in” domain lapse, breaking millions of sites and potentially putting them at further risk.
Spotted by The Next Web and BleepingComputer, Google apparently let the Blogspot.in domain lapse in early June, with Google no longer in control of that domain. Rather, it’s now being held by domainming.com and is available for purchase by anyone with $5,999 to spare.
Google hasn’t let the blogspot.com domain lapse, which is where all these blogs are still visible. However, Blogspot.in sites won’t automatically redirect there. Google previously set up the .in and other domain variations for different regions where Blogger sites were created. Having localized domain names allowed faster take-down requests for content hosted on the platform.
As it stands right now, the lapse in domain ownership has caused over 4 million Blogger-hosted websites to become broken in Google search and other areas where they were linked. BleepingComputer requested information from Google on this in early June but never received a response for the company.
It goes without saying that this was a massive screw-up, but it has the potential to do some real damage. If Google doesn’t re-purchase the BlogSpot.in the domain, the millions of URLs on the web could be redirected to harmful sites, to spread scams and/or malware, and so much more. $5,999 seems like a small price to pay for Google to prevent that.
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