The other day I reported on the topic; Google is a Domain Name Registrar. I was speaking with Shawn Hogan, you know the DigitalPoint guy, about this topic yesterday afternoon. He feels that Google's motives are not to become a domain name registrar to sell names at $10 a pop but rather to easily get real information about domain names. Supposedly, a registrar has access to the detailed contact, billing and administrative information that are assigned to all domain names that are registered, no matter if you are the registrar for that domain name or not. Shawn thinks, as do others, that they will use this information to track down link spammers and fight spam at a higher level.
I wonder if they would do evil? Is it evil? I need to find a forum thread that discusses this particular topic, I am sure there are.
Update: Looks like the folks at WebmasterWorld are cooking up some nice conspiracy theories.