Google Workspace thinks my domain is an email provider (2025)

I get this sort of thing constantly because my domain, 3e.org, which I have had for 30 years, is apparently impossible. It's either too short to be real, or starts with a number (obviously impossible).

And like the author, 90% of the time I can just disable their front-end validation and go on my merry way.

Smells like „product engineering“. So a product or an engineering lead gets a task to reduce risks of specific abuse by preventing someone from sending email from yahoo or web.de clone. As a quick solution they add this filter without „overthinking“ it. The impact is low, a few customers in a million, so its stupidity gets unnoticed and, once first complaint reaches them, quietly deprioritized to death. Removing it is cheap: the justification for taking that work is likely the show stopper. Google is an old large corp that hires and fires at a scale. Owning removal of abuse filter to increase revenue by Planck-sized amount is an impossible thing.

I use a .one for a project where it makes perfect sense. Brevo, who are a huge email delivery platform, told me they don't support signing up with a .one domain. Fortunately, after a couple of weeks going back-and-forth one of their developers eventually saw sense and fixed it.

Sadly, with Google, I don't think you'll ever get the issue that far up the chain.

The end is really hilarious. Google had a stupid frontend-only validation, it seems.

Since the author asked about Alice: it was an Internet provider in France in the early 2000's.

Some domains in that list are truly ancient. That was a trip down memory lane.

Just wait for someone at Google to read this post and then block the domain retrospectively.

alice.it is indeed an email provider's domain; based on the code snippet it seems like they are active in other countries.

alice.app however isn't registered anywhere.

This was a fun read. Absolutely baffling behaviour from Google.

If you could just change your company's domain name that'd be swell!

Surprising Google is happy to lose a paying company over this.

Although the author is taking quite the risk bypassing Google's validation like that. Not sure I'd be risking my company's workspace to do it in case Google wakes up ban hammer happy one morning.

I think ditching google would've been a better choice.

I would hope that somewhere at Google there is a policy that says you can't do anti-fraud and security checks in frontend only...

ooof that's bad, all levels of support missed the frontend validation and blamed you and an opaque non-existent process instead

I wonder how this list ended up being created anyway. Was it a long standing issue, or just some ai slop? web.com, web.org, web.net don't look like an email provider.

And like the author, 90% of the time I can just disable their front-end validation and go on my merry way.

Sadly, with Google, I don't think you'll ever get the issue that far up the chain.

Since the author asked about Alice: it was an Internet provider in France in the early 2000's.

Some domains in that list are truly ancient. That was a trip down memory lane.

The end is really hilarious. Google had a stupid frontend-only validation, it seems.

alice.it is indeed an email provider's domain; based on the code snippet it seems like they are active in other countries.

alice.app however isn't registered anywhere.

Since Google themselves claim that's a security check, there's a bug bounty here.

The author of that article missed their chance making Google eat their words.

This was a fun read. Absolutely baffling behaviour from Google.

If you could just change your company's domain name that'd be swell!

Surprising Google is happy to lose a paying company over this.

Although the author is taking quite the risk bypassing Google's validation like that. Not sure I'd be risking my company's workspace to do it in case Google wakes up ban hammer happy one morning.

Just wait for someone at Google to read this post and then block the domain retrospectively.

And ban their entire Google account

I think ditching google would've been a better choice.

ooof that's bad, all levels of support missed the frontend validation and blamed you and an opaque non-existent process instead

I would hope that somewhere at Google there is a policy that says you can't do anti-fraud and security checks in frontend only...

Well, if the alternative was going to be Microsoft 365... not so sure :)

I wonder how this list ended up being created anyway. Was it a long standing issue, or just some ai slop? web.com, web.org, web.net don't look like an email provider.

The rationale probably was that end users primarily identify the email provider by the subdomain, not the TLD, and therefore to prevent spoofing they block all domains where the subdomain corresponds to an email provider, regardless of the TLD. Like, they don’t want to allow gmail.<anything>, and the same for all other email providers they know of.

web.net, at least, absolutely is an email provider.

Since Google themselves claim that's a security check, there's a bug bounty here.

The author of that article missed their chance making Google eat their words.

And ban their entire Google account

Well, if the alternative was going to be Microsoft 365... not so sure :)

And delete all their data.

web.net, at least, absolutely is an email provider.

web.de is also a big email provider in Germany.

fair enough. at least not primarily an email provider. so if they offer any email.

And delete all their data.

*make it hidden, they will of course keep the data for themselves :)

web.de is also a big email provider in Germany.

fair enough. at least not primarily an email provider. so if they offer any email.

*make it hidden, they will of course keep the data for themselves :)

Published Oct 7, 2025 | Updated Aug 23, 2026

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Update: As of August 2026, this issue is still present.

I was creating a Google Workspace account for my company, as everyone knows, it’s a pretty straightforward sign-up process, until I’m hit with a weird, confusing error when I type my domain name:

Google Workspace domain error "Enter a valid domain name instead of an email provider"

“Enter a valid domain name instead of an email provider”

Huh? An email provider? What does this mean?

I thought maybe my domain was previously used as an email provider, so I look up the history of the domain, but nope, that’s not it.

I look up the error and find no official documentation by Google. However, I see that I’m not the only one to have come across it, there are a few community threads posted by people asking for help.

Believe it or not, one of those threads was by the Ukrainian Ministry of Economy; they were getting the same error for their domain. And of course, the so-called “experts” of the community provide the most useless response as always:

Response by the Google Community product expert to the Ukrainian Ministry of Economy

Left with no solution, I had to contact Google Workspace support. After being asked by multiple agents “Have you tried to create this to another browser?”, when I had already explained to them that I did, they transferred me to their high-level support specialist, Karen, who again asked me to try to sign up using another device, and I told her, again, that I have tried.

Then she asked me to record a video and wait for their product engineers to review it, and I did, and a few hours later I get an email:

Response by the Google Workspace support team

Ok, I give it a try, and nope, the issue still persists.

One week later, I receive another email:

Final response by the Google Workspace support team, following their product engineers' investigation

So let me get this right: they are suggesting that I use another domain for my company because their system WRONGLY flagged my legitimate domain, and they don’t even know exactly why.

Just for context, this is a premium domain with a very high premium renewal fee, no history of abuse obviously. And the .one TLD is a legit TLD used by legit businesses.

It seems like even their product engineers gave up and went ahead and gave a lazy response.

After replying with an angry response, left with no solution, I was about to ditch Google completely and head over to Microsoft, but I thought I would give it one last try and take the matter into my own hands.

I debug the source code of their sign-up page, and I find that the error is triggered by a local input validation function. They are checking the domain against a regex list of what seems to be email providers, though looking closely, there are a lot of weird entries on the list, one of which is web\\..*, the culprit preventing me from signing up my domain.

So apparently, engineers at Google decided that all web.[tld] domains are email providers…

And the entry me\\..* prevents the Ukrainian Ministry of Economy’s domain, me.gov.ua, from being accepted. Just because its subdomain is me.

One other entry is alice\\..*-not sure what’s up with that.

Here’s the full code snippet from the Google Workspace sign-up page for those interested:

var DHa, EHa;
DHa = "gmail\\..* hotmail\\..* yahoo\\..* myyahoo\\.com outlook\\..* aol\\..* inbox\\..* fastmail\\..* mail\\..{1,3}(\\..{2})?$ rediffmail\\..* lycos\\..* att\\..* comcast\\.net verizon\\..* talktalk\\..* laposte\\..* gmx\\..* web\\..* bk\\..* yandex\\..* rambler\\..* pochta\\..* live\\..* cox\\..* bellsouth\\..* me\\..* earthlink\\..* sbcglobal\\..* qq\\..* ceznam\\..* 163\\..* 126\\..* free\\..* sfr\\..* wanadoo\\..* aruba\\..* terra\\..* btinternet\\..* alice\\..* libero\\..* telenet\\..* corp\\.terra\\.com\\.co mac\\.com webstarts\\.com googlemail\\.com msn\\.com teleworm\\.com isbn10\\.net isbn13\\.net ymail\\.com mailinator\\.com pookmail\\.com trashymail\\.com dodgit\\.com spambob\\.com dotarai\\.co\\.th appspeople\\.dk indiamart\\.com pkt\\.pl naver\\.com seznam\\.cz hemsida24\\.se shaw\\.ca ncs\\.com\\.sg rogers\\.com rocketmail\\.com ukr\\.net charter\\.net uol\\.com\\.br ya\\.ru bigpond\\.com idwebhost\\.com vkios\\.com registar\\.com cpasitesolutions\\.com optonline\\.net iridiuminteractive\\.com data-typing-earns\\.info smartpillars\\.com nate\\.com list\\.ru o2\\.pl riaenjolie\\.com ii-ii-ii-ii\\.com wp\\.pl therapysites\\.com mef\\.gob\\.pe theiconweb\\.com hanmail\\.net nordicweb\\.com havealook\\.com ig\\.com\\.br skepy\\.com nameisp\\.com optusnet\\.com\\.au creativemotiondesign nifty\\.com ntlworld\\.com petamatic\\.com telus\\.net msa\\.hinet\\.net sympatico\\.ca bojanowski\\.pl bing\\.com zlatestranky\\.cz xtra\\.co\\.nz sina\\.com bluewin\\.ch bol\\.com\\.br centrum\\.cz mindspring\\.com juno\\.com yourha\\.com photobiz\\.com aim\\.com videotron\\.ca blueyonder\\.co\\.uk email\\.cz tiscali\\.it tiscali\\.co\\.uk hosting\\.com\\.pe in\\.com teamunify\\.com sky\\.com idium\\.no family-address\\.ru pelsoftlabs\\.in pobox\\.com sakaryarehberim\\.com email\\.com iinet\\.net\\.au websites\\.ca globo\\.com code49\\.net xs4all\\.nl windowslive\\.com usa\\.net webtel\\.in bigpond\\.net\\.au vip\\.qq\\.com roadrunner\\.com pacbell\\.net sohu\\.com usa\\.com i\\.ua embarqmail\\.com batesville\\.com gobiernoenlinea\\.gov\\..* foxmail\\.com internode\\.on\\.net abv\\.bg paran\\.com t-online\\.de cfl\\.rr\\.com 139\\.com icloud\\.com newmail\\.ru nightmail\\.ru nm\\.ru pop3\\.ru rbcmail\\.ru smtp\\.ru hushmail\\.com aliceadsl\\.fr arcor\\.de centurytel\\.net chello\\.nl club-internet\\.fr facebook\\.com freenet\\.de frontiernet\\.net hetnet\\.nl home\\.nl neuf\\.fr orange\\.fr planet\\.nl skynet\\.be tin\\.it virgilio\\.it voila\\.fr windstream\\.net yahoogroups\\.com zonnet\\.nl proton\\.me protonmail\\.com protonmail\\.ch pm\\.me .*\\.ocn\\.ne\\.jp ocn\\.ne\\.jp .*\\.plala\\.or\\.jp plala\\.or\\.jp .*\\.biglobe\\.ne\\.jp biglobe\\.ne\\.jp .*\\.so-net\\.ne\\.jp so-net\\.ne\\.jp".split(" ");
EHa = "att.com sfr.com terra.co inbox.kitchen alice.app live.space live.lk live.synxis.com live.ink".split(" ");
 _.Au = function(a) {
     return EHa.includes(a) ? !1 : DHa.some(b => (b = a.match(b)) && b.index === 0)
 }
 ;

The workaround

I was curious what would happen if I disabled this function, so I did, and I was happy to find out that once disabled, I was able to continue the sign-up process for my domain successfully. That means that this was only a frontend validation, not a server-side one.

Though, I guess that the Ukrainian Ministry of Economy probably went for Microsoft 365 instead.

Hacker Times

Hacker Times

Google Workspace thinks my domain is an email provider (2025)

Discussion

Discussion

The workaround