Yesterday, Google announced that it was bringing back its Google TV brand. This is not really all that interesting to me, but the domain name situation was something that caught my attention. First things first, check out the one minute introductory video shared on Google’s official Twitter account:
Welcome to Google TV. The entertainment you love, with a little help from Google. 📺 Available today. pic.twitter.com/qJYSbWWUeM
— Google (@Google) September 30, 2020
You will notice there is no url / domain name mentioned in the video. This probably doesn’t mean much, but I thought that was interesting.
When you explore a bit further, you can see that Google is using its .Google brand extension for the Google TV website: TV.Google. This stands out to me because the branding is backwards, as it reads TV Google rather than Google TV. Google has used its .brand domain name extension more than many companies, so this is not a huge surprise.
Google also owns the brand match .com domain name – GoogleTV.com. If you visit GoogleTV.com, you will be redirected to the TV.Google website.
Notably, Google also owns the Google.TV ccTLD domain name. What I found peculiar is that Google.TV neither forwards to the Google TV website, nor does it resolve to any website. You would think Google might at least set up forwarding of this domain name rather than letting ISPs like Comcast or Verizon Fios monetize the error traffic and/or redirect it.
Finally, Google is smartly forwarding traffic from TV.Google.com to TV.Google. This is wise because many people will see the .Google extension and assume it is .Google.com instead. The company already owns the Google.com domain name, so setting up a forward on the TV. subdomain was an easy addition.
Google is pretty smart when it comes to domain names and domain name acquisitions. It is always worth observing how Google handles its domain name branding when it launches a new product or service.
Google might be shifting brand direction, a kind of ‘unbranding’? And ‘streamline’ their brand direction, e.g. gmail might also end up as mail.google. Google Pay, Google Mail, Google TV, etc.
Apple’s been dropping the ‘i’ on products like the Apple Watch, and older ones like iCal and iChat, (Calendar and Messages).
Would feel a bit awkward through, Apple Phone and Google Mail don’t roll of the tongue like iPhone and Gmail.
May be better to remove/null the nameservers on the .tv, for security since they don’t control the registry parking servers. And you don’t want visitors getting accustomed to using the wrong url.
Not using google.tv is certainly a miss. “Google TV” is the most natural way to put the brand. Not “TV Google”.