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Of course, there is intense speculation among Google watchers about what it could all mean. Among the ideas doing the rounds are that it allows Google to register new domain names without anyone finding out, adding value to Adsense for domains - which allows domain holders to put contextual ads against 'parked' domains or to offer a low cost domain registration service to its Blogger customers who normally settle for some kind of second level domain name instead.

Which means it will almost certainly be for something else entirely.

In a statement to us Google said `Google become a domain name registrar to gain better visibility into the infrastructure of the Internet. While we have no plans to register domains at this time, we believe this information can help us increase the quality of our search results.`

So now we know.