Isn't that the same with co.uk or com.au?
Americans may find that inconvenient, more radical tongues call it a sign of US imperialism that .com is often associated with the home for US companies.
Right, technically and probably legally there was a list of domains that you cannot register because they act as a "top-level" like co.uk. Not sure how official and how correct the list is.
I'm not sure why you felt the need to try and make some point about US imperialism in a discussion about a TLD with an extra dot when plenty of countries have a TLD that is customarily used without an extra dot: .de, .ch, .nl, .es, .ie, etc. It's simply a matter of convention (and sometimes local legislation) that .co.uk, .com.uk, .co.in, and others became the norm for commercial entities in these countries while .com similarly became a norm for US companies by convention. There's nothing stopping a non-US company from using a .com domain, as I'm sure you're aware.
It's actually not that popular with most people I know because it sort of muddies the water with most Australians being very comfortable with .com.au and having a basic understanding of its restrictions.
Likewise .com typically implies US, as affirmed by the .com.mx, etc variants
If ICANN wasn't super biased towards favoring the US, do you really think .gov would have been approved in the first place?
I'll gladly concede this point. I do agree that ICANN favors the US for .gov (and .mil). It would definitely be preferable if these weren't approved at all or at least weren't restricted to US entities.
> Likewise .com typically implies US, as affirmed by the .com.mx, etc variants
I responded to this in my previous comment. As far as I know there wasn't a decision to systematically favor US companies, so I'm not sure what this has to do with US imperialism. There are many websites in the UK and other countries that use .com, even if it's still far more common for US entities, and there's nothing stopping more from doing so.
The 'public suffix list' is one: https://publicsuffix.org/learn/
Does anyone know why bulgaria thought this was a good idea?
> bg
> (a-z).bg
> (0-9).bg
I can't find the mentioned "rules"-document...
Edit: shorter representation of original list
Italy registered subdomains for all its regions and provinces, including spelling variations.
All of the following domains are for the same region: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trentino-Alto_Adige/S%C3%BCdti...
trentin-sud-tirol.it
trentin-süd-tirol.it
trentin-sudtirol.it
trentin-südtirol.it
trentin-sued-tirol.it
trentin-suedtirol.it
trentino-a-adige.it
trentino-aadige.it
trentino-alto-adige.it
trentino-altoadige.it
trentino-s-tirol.it
trentino-stirol.it
trentino-sud-tirol.it
trentino-süd-tirol.it
trentino-sudtirol.it
trentino-südtirol.it
trentino-sued-tirol.it
trentino-suedtirol.it
trentino.it
trentinoa-adige.it
trentinoaadige.it
trentinoalto-adige.it
trentinoaltoadige.it
trentinos-tirol.it
trentinostirol.it
trentinosud-tirol.it
trentinosüd-tirol.it
trentinosudtirol.it
trentinosüdtirol.it
trentinosued-tirol.it
trentinosuedtirol.it
trentinsud-tirol.it
trentinsüd-tirol.it
trentinsudtirol.it
trentinsüdtirol.it
trentinsued-tirol.it
trentinsuedtirol.it
After the 2nd world war Italy just invaded south tyrol/now trentino because they mixed up the capitulation date. They still speak tyrolian there, but belong officially to Italy.
So it's not a normative document, but an empirical document maintained by volunteers. The introduction tells what is the difference between a domain (registered by one entity) and a subdomain (any number can be created by the same entity): If a website sets cookies for something above their domain, e.g. co.uk or org.eu the cookie would be valid on other entities' websites. Browsers use this list to prevent that. eu.org and it's non-registerable subdomains are correctly listed.
As a whole this looks a bit fragile, depending on volunteer work. Or you could say positively good old internet style: No single government or company controlling it.
The likes of uk.com and others owned by Centralnic have been around a while.
I've never been sure what to call these since they aren't (as in top) TLDs.
You won't see co.uk ever expire because it's owned and manages by the same company that manages the TLD, but it's perfectly possible for eu.org to mess up their renewal and disappear from the internet. There's no direct connection between .org and the company managing these subdomains.
Calling American TLDs like com/net/org imperialism is too extreme. The internet was developed by Americans for American use and other countries were added to the domain system later. When com/net/org because available, the entire system was completely centralised on the USA so it's not that strange that other countries had to make do with just a national TLD. That's not some kind of attempt of the USA to enforce their rules on the world, that's just historical development. These days, all kinds of TLDs are available, including ones in non-Latin scripts. I don't ever see any .भारत domains on the web (and I wouldn't even know how to type it if I saw it) but it's an available TLD for anyone to use. There are even geographical TLDs like .frl (Fryslân) and .wien (Vienna) that go way overboard with the TLD concept imo.
I have no strong feelings about this part of US dominance, it's just a fact of life. There are worse things. Like US agencies doing mass surveillance on foreigners worldwide. Or using extra-terratorial sanctions, assuming they are world-government.
You hold the domain at the whim of whoever controls the top level. Likely, they'll be less reliable than an official registry.