Interesting...
FYI,
- ferg
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2005/01/31/google_is_now_a_domain_registrar.html
And did you also hear they were recently looking to aquire dark fiber in
different parts of the US? Google is soon going to be a lot more then just
search engine (actually it already is!)...
could be they are attempting to not get caught in a wrongfully transfered
domain like the most recent and public panix.com ?
Then we should expect ebay to follow soon ... 
i think that if your entire business is related to 10 letters and a
decimal point you might indeed consider this tact, especially if it costs
less than being without your domain-name for 2 weeks of icann dispute
resolution.
: On Mon, 31 Jan 2005, william(at)elan.net wrote:
: > And did you also hear they were recently looking to aquire dark fiber in
: > different parts of the US? Google is soon going to be a lot more then just
: > search engine (actually it already is!)...
: > On Mon, 31 Jan 2005, Fergie (Paul Ferguson) wrote:
: > > Interesting...
: > > http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2005/01/31/google_is_now_a_domain_registrar.html
Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, presented at the 35th Anniversary of the
Internet forum and described where Google was going. They are indeed
going for MUCH more than just being a search engine. If they do what he
mentioned, they're going to be a really big player in the internet's
future...
scott
This would seem to make sense to me as well.
A company like google can use it's power to prevent any domain theft a la panix.com however..
they are probably also intending to make it easier for people to create custom domains for their blogs on blogspot.
I wonder if google intends to use the dark fiber in conjunction with the new video thing?
Currently it only indexes CC data, but it seems like they intend to stream video at some point.
That would require a massive amount of bandwidth, hence the need for dark fiber.
- Adam