I believe it was StartSSL and/or WoSign back then

Check https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdqYNuULEypMnp4i5pR... (linked from https://blog.cloudflare.com/friendly-bots/) if you didn’t already.

Disclaimer: I work at CF

iirc, custom DNS at CF refers to using your own subdomains as name servers for CF instead of the regular *.ns.cloudflare.com. Basically a form of whitelabelling.

Specifying 3rd party name servers as your domain’s name server was (still is?) not possible with Cloudflare Registrar.

(Disclaimer: I work there)

It’s pretty crazy that you can’t setup a custom 3rd party name server. I can’t even transfer my domain from one Cloudflare account to another without transferring my domain to another registrar…

That's the strategy. They offer "at-cost pricing", but force you to use their own name server.

Kinda feels like restrictions on what you can submit to the registry (NS and glue records) should be something ICANN forbids.

Thank you for this information, I was planning to move my domains.google domains to Cloudflare, but now I think I won't do that. I'll still use Cloudflare, but the inability to use my own NS is a dealbreaker for using Cloudflare as a registrar in my opinion.

exactly. just as I was considering moving to CF this changed my entire mind.

Amazon owns .free - http://nic.free/

Also .call, .hot, .now, .smile, .you and lots of others. Most aren't used in any way so far.

One domain they currently do use is .bot [1] – it's limited to verified chatbots only.

[1]: https://www.amazonregistry.com/bot

They only seem to have made .moi, .bot, and 5 Japanese gTLDs generally available.

There are many more they’ve been sitting on for a few years now. .bot was the most recent to launch and that was a good few years ago now [1].

Of course, there’s also the saga with Brazil over .amazon

[1] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-bot-gtld-from-amazon/

Actually, you can assign (not transfer) IP ranges and the one advertising it does not need to own it, but would need a Letter of Authorization (LoA) or similar.

Google now has a publicly available ACME-compatible CA. For CF’s Universal SSL (default/free) Cloudflare may use Google’s CA. But may choose other providers. For Advanced Certificate Manager (paid addon), you can choose Google or other CAs for Cloudflare.

But basically Google would be the one that is issuing an SSL cert for a website. Same as LetsEncrypt.

Disclaimer: CF employee

Swapfiets builds their own bikes and does not - never ever - sell them. If one gets stolen, it can‘t be resold without one noticing it’s stolen, as these are not in circulation in the first place and still owned by the company that built them

Freenom has free TLDs (.tk, .cf, ….)

The cheapest over time will be .de with as less as 4€ a year depending on the registrar. The cheapest first year domain used to be .xyz with 0.99$ at Namecheap

I run my own email server an never had any issues with email deliverability. There must be a reason for these bounces. Any SMTP logs?

Wouldn’t the one publishing these PII on a website be in breach of the GDPR rather than Google who just crawls it?