Networking newbie needs help with DNS

Thanks for looking in! I’m not very good with networking, so sorry if this is a dumb question.

I am running a front-end webapp on a VM (with a static IP) provisioned through GCE. I can see the app in any browser by hitting the IP address directly. I have gotten a domain name via Google Domain, and set it up with my VM using the following tutorial (followed exactly, except I’m running my own app instead of ‘Hello World’).

https://cloud.google.com/dns/docs/tutorials/create-domain-tutorial

However, when I try to access the app via the domain name, browsers (I tried 4 different ones) will not allow me to try to hit it using http (insecure)-- no matter what I type in, it always changes to https, resulting in an ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR that I can’t get around. I’d like to avoid buying certs (moving from http to https), since this is a tiny app that accepts no personal information that I made just for me and a few of my friends to use.

I tried reaching out to Google Domains, and they said I should refer to Google Cloud support because they think it must be a problem with my Cloud DNS set up.

Does anyone have any ideas that could help? Thanks!

Hey, I actually figured it out. The domain name I chose has a ‘.dev’ suffix, which apparently has been reserved by Google for a while. If you use a ‘.dev’ domain name, you must secure it by getting a certificate. I replaced the domain name with a new one using a ‘.com’ suffix, and now it’s working just fine!

https://medium.engineering/use-a-dev-domain-not-anymore-95219778e6fd