Ask HN: Week after I launched Google releases same product. What should I do?

15 points by dimaulupov 14 years ago | 8 comments

Hi,

I made this: http://wwwizer.com and today Google announced the same thing.

A little bit of history.

Two years ago it started as just a simple redirect. Point your naked (www-less) domain to my IP (174.129.25.170) and every request for any url without "www." in front gets redirected to the same URL but with www in front. Really 4 lines of nginx config.

It is quite handy if you host website on Google App Engine or on Google Sites because if you are using your own domain it doesn't work without www subdomain. www.example.com works, example.com - doesn't. You need to make CNAME to ghs.google.com for your domain to work but you can't do this with naked (or root, or apex) domain.

It got popular (at least in my terms). 4100 websites are using it. 350000+ redirects a day.

So two months ago I decided to "expand" and maybe get some, you know, profit.

SSL for the Cloud. New product. Yay! You get dedicated IP, SSL certificate, point your domain to this IP and it proxies your app (or any URL of your choice actually). App Engine did not have SSL support at the moment, a lot of people were complaining but it looked like there were no progress on this matter.

And today comes this "Announcing SSL for Custom Domains" http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine/browse_thread/thread/d7fb200cbe9d2010?pli=1

So what do you think I should do now?

Joakal 14 years ago |

Google has many advantages. Being successful at implementations is not one of them.

They also have many disadvantages such as lack of support. Be true to your customers.

revorad 14 years ago |

Put your phone number up on the site in a big bold font. Handhold customers who can't spell SSL. Do good things for your customers, good things that don't scale. You'll be safe from Google.

Look to VWO, Clicky, Mixpanel, DDG for inspiration and advice.

anandkulkarni 14 years ago |

Paul Graham has a saying: 'Startups are never killed by competition. They die of suicide.' If your service is useful, people will continue to use it. (I use it, and was pointed there by Dotcloud).

Google App Engine isn't really your only source of business, is it? Was it ever? Just go after a different community.

Differentiate, ignore Google, and move onward and upward. SSL for the cloud is definitely useful.

dimaulupov 14 years ago | |

Thanks, will try!

_pius 14 years ago |

Launch and compete.

dimaulupov 14 years ago | |

Launched, it is all working (and I even have customers). And this tiny problem.

_pius 14 years ago | | |

Fair enough. Just compete then. :)

jxiong 14 years ago |

Let more people know you. Though Google is giant, Its their advantage, and may the disadvantage.