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Comment by gchokov | Hacker News Reader

Really hate when web sites assume you live in the US. Don't make me click around menus and finally ask for US Zip code (And don't assume Zip codes have 5-digits only).

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> And don't assume Zip codes have 5-digits only

Aren't ZIP (it's an initialism, Zone Improvement Plan) codes by definition a US-only thing? Even in countries that don't call them post/postal codes, they're not known as ZIP codes.

Pedantically, yes. Practically, no.

Basically everybody in the US uses the phrase "zip-code" informally to mean postal code even when talking about international addresses.

I've never run across anyone in the U.S. who refers to postal codes as zip codes.

> I've never run across anyone in the U.S. who refers to postal codes as zip codes.

Say what? Where in the U.S. do you live? I've been all over, and I've never once heard them called 'postal codes'; always and every time 'zip codes.'

I've only ever heard "postal code" in the South.

You must live in a different U.S. than everyone else. It's clearly the other way around.

https://www.google.com/search?q=site:usps.com+"zip+code" returns 120k results

https://www.google.com/search?q=site:usps.com+"postal+code" returns 372 results

To be honest, everyone should refer to these as postal codes or at least address codes. No one refers to the ZIP code as Zone Improvement Plan code anyway.. so what is the use of these code in the real life?

'should'?

What's wrong with calling them Zip codes? That's how they're written everywhere.

Good grief, I was talking about referring to international postal codes as zip codes, which I thought was what this thread is about.

I've only heard of ZIP pronounced as a word and not spelled out like you'd spell out CPU. I'd call it an acronym.

Amazon.com is their US site. If you're there, you've effectively walked into a store in Seattle. If you want a store not tailored to the US market, you'll need to visit one of the sites they've made for other countries (where this is probably not available yet).

True. But if they can "personalize" the price they show me when I buy books, why they can't personalize the web site and tell me these services are not available in my country?

This is how you know it's just as much investor marketing as it is to get early adopters excited; they want their overseas investors to know that they're not just sitting on their laurels this quarter.

They better do something meaningful. AMZN investors are not impressed lately. Some of them waited for an year to be break-even :) But that's different story...

> Amazon.com is their US site.

That's exactly the problem. .com <> US

Initially this kind of behavior was "quaint" and amusingly "typically American". But in 2015 it's just f-ing annoying.

> But in 2015 it's just f-ing annoying.

So's complaining about something that's been the de-facto standard for 2+ decades.

You aren't aware of their localized .uk, .de, .jp, etc sites for they have for their markets in other countries?

.us should be for US stores. .com is more universal.

Back when Amazon was registered I doubt anyone was using .us for a company website, so changing everything to point to that years after the fact would probably do more harm than good to the business, plus the fact that they at the start were only US based, so a .com at the time would have and still is the best choice for a US based brand identity.

At the time, sure. But since then they've added a bunch of country-specific domains. The store aimed at the USA could be hosted on a .us domain by now.

Why would they want to break or redirect thousands (millions?) of existing links and confuse many non tech people who get redirected to a .us site?

Sure it might make us on HN feel good that .com does not equal USA and we are the center of the world, but it would make little sense otherwise.

Well, it would stop confusing the other 2 billion people on the internet that aren't in the USA.

I think the crowd here over estimates how tech savvy everyone else is, or whom actually are aware of the .us domain, and also care enough to think it should redirect there.

But we already see that non-tech-savvy people go to Amazon.com from the UK and expect to be able to buy things that they can't buy. Having a .us domain would be less confusing, for most of the people on the internet.

If you visit the amazon.com site from outside the US it should tell you you're visiting the US store and recommend you visit the local site in your country with a button that looks like your country's flag.

So, anyone not targeting every nation on earth must not use GTLDs?

Why?

Don't ask me, ask the people complaining about US stores using GTLDs.

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