.COM is also the extension of the DOS COM file, an extension used for executables.
.com is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) used on the Internet's Domain Name System. It was one of the original top-level domains, established in January 1985, and has grown to be the largest TLD in use. It is currently operated by VeriSign. It is consistently pronounced as a word, dot-com, and has entered the common language this way; in contrast, though some of the other TLDs are also sometimes pronounced as words, they're also frequently spelled out instead, something that is never done with .com.
Although .com domains have always been intended for commercial use, they are currently available for anyone to register. In the 1990s, .com became the most common top-level domain for websites, especially commercial ones, and gave its name to dot-com companies. The introduction of .biz, which is restricted to businesses, has had little impact on the popularity of .com.
There has been a tendency since the mid-1990s for companies to include the "dot-com" as part of their official company names, peaking around 2000 (the time known as the "dot-com boom"). This has reduced in frequency since then, however, due to a backlash against this boom and its subsequent bust. On rare occasions, a company or organization will take on an official name including another domain ending, such as .org (ex: OpenOffice.org), but this is much rarer than the .com usage.
Although companies anywhere in the world can register .com domains, many countries have a second-level domain with a similar purpose under their own ccTLD. Such second-level domains are usually of the form .com.xx or .co.xx, where xx is the ccTLD. Australia (.com.au), the United Kingdom (.co.uk), Mexico (.com.mx), New Zealand (.co.nz), People's Republic of China (.com.cn), Japan (.co.jp) and South Korea (.co.kr) are all examples.
Often, noncommercial sites such as those of nonprofit organizations, governments, and so on will use .com addresses, which some find to be contrary to the domain's original purpose. A .org, .gov, or other more specific TLD might be more appropriate for such sites. List of oldest .com domainsThe following are the 75 oldest still-existing registered .com domains:
Rank Create date Domain name
1 March 15 1985 SYMBOLICS.COM
2 April 24 1985 BBN.COM
3 May 24 1985 THINK.COM
4 July 11 1985 MCC.COM
5 September 30 1985 DEC.COM
6 November 7 1985 NORTHROP.COM
7 January 9 1986 XEROX.COM
8 January 17 1986 SRI.COM
9 March 3 1986 HP.COM
10 March 5 1986 BELLCORE.COM
11 March 19 1986 IBM.COM
11 March 19 1986 SUN.COM
13 March 25 1986 INTEL.COM
13 March 25 1986 TI.COM
15 April 25 1986 ATT.COM
16 May 8 1986 GMR.COM
16 May 8 1986 TEK.COM
18 July 10 1986 FMC.COM
18 July 10 1986 UB.COM
20 August 5 1986 BELL-ATL.COM
20 August 5 1986 GE.COM
20 August 5 1986 GREBYN.COM
20 August 5 1986 ISC.COM
20 August 5 1986 NSC.COM
20 August 5 1986 STARGATE.COM
26 September 2 1986 BOEING.COM
27 September 18 1986 ITCORP.COM
28 September 29 1986 SIEMENS.COM
29 October 18 1986 PYRAMID.COM
30 October 27 1986 ALPHACDC.COM
30 October 27 1986 BDM.COM
30 October 27 1986 FLUKE.COM
30 October 27 1986 INMET.COM
30 October 27 1986 KESMAI.COM
30 October 27 1986 MENTOR.COM
30 October 27 1986 NEC.COM
30 October 27 1986 RAY.COM
30 October 27 1986 ROSEMOUNT.COM
30 October 27 1986 VORTEX.COM
40 November 5 1986 ALCOA.COM
40 November 5 1986 GTE.COM
42 November 17 1986 ADOBE.COM
42 November 17 1986 AMD.COM
42 November 17 1986 DAS.COM
42 November 17 1986 DATA-IO.COM
42 November 17 1986 OCTOPUS.COM
42 November 17 1986 PORTAL.COM
42 November 17 1986 TELTONE.COM
42 December 11 1986 3COM.COM
50 December 11 1986 AMDAHL.COM
50 December 11 1986 CCUR.COM
50 December 11 1986 CI.COM
50 December 11 1986 CONVERGENT.COM
50 December 11 1986 DG.COM
50 December 11 1986 PEREGRINE.COM
50 December 11 1986 QUAD.COM
50 December 11 1986 SQ.COM
50 December 11 1986 TANDY.COM
50 December 11 1986 TTI.COM
50 December 11 1986 UNISYS.COM
61 January 19 1987 CGI.COM
61 January 19 1987 CTS.COM
61 January 19 1987 SPDCC.COM
64 February 19 1987 APPLE.COM
65 March 4 1987 NMA.COM
65 March 4 1987 PRIME.COM
67 April 4 1987 PHILIPS.COM
68 April 23 1987 DATACUBE.COM
68 April 23 1987 KAI.COM
68 April 23 1987 TIC.COM
68 April 23 1987 VINE.COM
72 April 30 1987 NCR.COM
73 May 14 1987 CISCO.COM
73 May 14 1987 RDL.COM
75 May 20 1987 SLB.COM
.net is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) used on the Internet's Domain Name System. The .net gTLD is currently operated by VeriSign.
.net was one of the original top-level domains (despite not being mentioned in RFC 920), created in January 1985. It was initially intended for use by network oriented entities such as Internet service providers. Currently, there are no formal restrictions on who can register a .net domain name. Therefore, while still popular with network operators, it is often treated as a second .com by many.
Incidentally, "net" is a romanisation of the Russian word ("no", also commonly romanised as the more acoustically appropriate ""), and a domain name like "object.net" can be interpreted as "there is no object". Some domains exploit this pun, for example mozga.net (brain absent) or putina.net (there is no Vladimir Putin). Operation of .net from 2005 VeriSign, the operator of .net after acquiring Network Solutions, had its operational contract expire on June 30, 2005. ICANN, the organisation responsible for domain management, sought proposals from organisations to operate it for at least six years beyond that date.
On 19 January, 2005, ICANN announced it had received 5 bids [1] from the following organisations:
Afilias
CORE++
DENIC
Sentan Registry Services
VeriSign
On 28 March, 2005, ICANN subsequently announced[2] an independent evaluator (Telcordia) had determined Verisign was the best choice to continue operating the .net registry. There was much controversy regarding this decision, and all losing registries complained formally and publicly that the selection process was flawed, and unfairly favoured Verisign. Additionally, Telcordia was owned by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) from 1997 until November 2004; SAIC also owned Versign from 1995 till 2003. Critics claim this is a conflict of interest.
.org (organization) is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) used in the Internet's Domain Name System. No pronunciation, whether "dot org" or "dot O-R-G", has been established.
.org was one of the original top-level domains, established in January 1985, originally intended for use by organizations that did not meet the requirements for other gTLDs. Now anyone can register a .org domain. .org was the domain commonly recommended for use by individuals, although .name and .info are now alternatives.
The .org TLD has been operated since 1 January 2003 by Public Interest Registry.
Although organizations anywhere in the world can register .org domains, many countries have a second-level domain with a similar purpose under their own country code TLD. Such second-level domains are usually of the form .org.xx or .or.xx, where xx is the ccTLD.
The .org TLD is sometimes associated with the open source/free software movement, as opposed to the .com domains used mostly by companies. While it is true that many open source projects use .org domains (OpenOffice.org even has it in the product name), most .org domains do not qualify for this generalization.
.biz is a generic top-level domain intended for domains to be used by businesses; the name is a phonetic spelling of the first syllable of "business". It was created to relieve some of the demand for the finite domain names available in the .com top-level domain, and to provide an alternative to businesses whose preferred .com domain name had already been registered by another party. There are no specific legal or geographic qualifications to register a .biz domain name, except that it must be for "bona fide business or commercial use" (i.e. no personal or "soap box" sites, and no cybersquatting), and the usual legal remedies for trademark infringement are applicable. It was created in 2001 along with several others as the first batch of new gTLDs approved by ICANN following the boom in interest in the internet in the 1990s. It is administered by Neulevel, with registration available through ICANN-accredited registrars.
In contrast to the sunrise period of .info, .biz did not grant trademark owners first chance at registration, but instead used a procedure whereby they could file intellectual property claims in advance and then challenge any eventual registrant through a policy named "STOP" (Startup Trademark Opposition Policy). A number of domains were successfully obtained by trademark owners from other registrants through this policy; some of the more controversial cases, where generic words were taken over based on trademark claims in a process deemed "reverse hijacking" by critics, included that of paint.biz and canadian.biz, the latter of which was later reversed by a court decision.
Although intended to be a restricted domain aimed at businesses, in reality the .biz domain is run as an unrestricted domain, available to anyone for any use. No enforcement mechanisms are planned or intended, at least directly by the registry or registrars, though it is in theory possible for third parties to challenge noncompliant registrations through a dispute resolution policy.
Although many .biz registrations have taken place (second only to .info among the new TLDs), critics note that it still has low name recognition with the general public, little use by major reputable businesses, and much use in spam, scams, and porn.
.info is a generic top-level domain intended for informative websites, although its use is not restricted. It was a part of ICANN's highly publicized announcement, in late 2000, of a phased release of seven new generic top-level domains (gTLDs). The event was billed as the first addition of major gTLDs to the Internet since the DNS was developed in the 1980s. The seven new gTLDs, selected from over 180 proposals, were meant in part to take the pressure off the overcrowded .com domain.
.info has been the most successful of the seven new domain names, with over 2.4 million domain names registered up to 2005. In addition, over 1 million .info web sites are in active and dedicated use. In the aftermath of September 11, 2001 9/11, New York City's Metropolitan Transit Authority used the easy to remember mta.info web site to lead users to latest information on schedules and tickets on the city's trains, buses and ferries.
.info is an unrestricted domain, meaning anyone can obtain a second-level domain under .info. You don't have to be a library, for example. As a generic, unrestricted domain name, anyone can use .info for any purpose, similar to .com, .net or .org domains. This is in contrast to a TLD such as .edu or .coop, which comes with criteria.
The launching of .info involved a "sunrise period" for trademark owners followed by a "landrush" open to all. This process came under much criticism for giving trademarks precedence over words that are generic in other contexts; for instance, the Caterpillar construction equipment company was able to get cat.info before anybody else, such as a feline enthusiast, even had a chance, and sex.info went to somebody who had a trademark on a graphical logo including the word "sex".
Although many fraudulent registrations were initially made by registrants who didn't actually own a valid trademark, a challenge procedure later weeded out most of these. Afilias mounted a successful clean-up effort to evict and restore these domains to the general public.
In a controversial move, at the last minute before registrations began the names of countries were reserved from registration at the request of ICANN, to the consternation of those who had paid pre-registration fees to attempt to register these names in the landrush. ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee, comprised of representatives appointed by countries around the world appluaded the move, the first by any major domain to protect the national interests of sovereign nations.
Many .info names have been registered (the most of any of the new TLDs), but some critics say that recognition by the general public is low, and many are hoarded speculatively or used for unsavory purposes such as sites advertised in e-mail spam, although the .biz domain name is most popular for spam.
The .info domain has been operated since its creation by Afilias. In 2003, .info was the first gTLD domain to support IETF standards-based internationalized domain names, as described at .info IDN.
.us is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the United States of America, established in 1985. Registrants of .us domains must be United States citizens, residents, or organizations, or a foreign entity with a presence in the United States. Most registrants in the country have registered for .com, .net, .org and other gTLDs, rather than .us, which has traditionally only been used by some state governments. In particular, the domains .gov and .mil have been reserved for US usage. Probably the most widely used .us site is the free hosting site imageshack.us.
However, from April 2002, second-level domains became available for commercial use. Previously, registrants could only register third-level domains or higher. The .us domain is administered by NeuStar Inc.. Second-level domains .ak.us: Alaska
.al.us: Alabama
.ar.us: Arkansas
.az.us: Arizona
.ca.us: California
.co.us: Colorado
.ct.us: Connecticut
.dc.us: District of Columbia
.de.us: Delaware
.dni.us: distributed national institutes
.fed.us: federal government agencies
.fl.us: Florida
.ga.us: Georgia
.hi.us: Hawaii
.ia.us: Iowa
.id.us: Idaho
.il.us: Illinois
.in.us: Indiana
.isa.us: interstate agencies
.kids.us: content suitable for children under 13
.ks.us: Kansas
.ky.us: Kentucky
.la.us: Louisiana
.ma.us: Massachusetts
.md.us: Maryland
.me.us: Maine
.mi.us: Michigan
.mn.us: Minnesota
.mo.us: Missouri
.ms.us: Mississippi
.mt.us: Montana
.nc.us: North Carolina
.nd.us: North Dakota
.ne.us: Nebraska
.nh.us: New Hampshire
.nj.us: New Jersey
.nm.us: New Mexico
.nsn.us: native sovereign nations (federally recognized Native American tribes)
.nv.us: Nevada
.ny.us: New York
.oh.us: Ohio
.ok.us: Oklahoma
.or.us: Oregon
.pa.us: Pennsylvania
.ri.us: Rhode Island
.sc.us: South Carolina
.sd.us: South Dakota
.tn.us: Tennessee
.tx.us: Texas
.ut.us: Utah
.vt.us: Vermont
.va.us: Virginia
.wa.us: Washington
.wi.us: Wisconsin
.wv.us: West Virginia
.wy.us: Wyoming
Namespace within states (largely deprecated)
..us: cities, counties, parishes, and townships
ci...us: city government agencies (subdomain under locality)
town...us: town government agencies (subdomain under locality)
co...us: county government agencies (subdomain under locality)
.k12..us: public school districts
.pvt.k12..us: private schools
.cc..us: community colleges
.tec..us: technical and vocational schools
.lib..us: state, regional, city, and county libraries
.state..us: state government agencies
.gen..us: general independent entities (groups not fitting into the above categories)
Use as English wordSince "us" is a pronoun in the English language, this opens up possibilities for domain names which are English phrases, similar to names used in other ccTLDs, such as i.am and start.at. Help.us would be one possible such domain, possibly of use for soliciting donations. However, there has been little actual use of .us in this manner. Such domains are known as domain hacks. del.icio.us is the most visited website with one of these domain names.
A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is a top-level domain used and reserved for a country or a dependent territory. These are two letters long, and most of them correspond to the ISO 3166-1 standard for country codes. General information There are over 243 ccTLDs; see the list of Internet TLDs and IANA's list of ccTLDs. Most ccTLDs correspond to the two-letter ISO 3166-1 country codes, but there are several differences, explained below. Each country appoints managers for its ccTLD and sets the rules for allocating domains. Some countries allow anyone in the world to acquire a domain in their ccTLD, for example Armenia (am), Austria (at) Cocos (Keeling) Islands (cc), Germany (de), Niue (nu), Samoa (ws), Tonga (to), Turkmenistan (tm) and Tuvalu (tv). Other countries or dependent territories allow only residents to acquire a domain in their ccTLD, for example Australia (au), Canada (ca) and Mongolia (mn). ISO 3166-1 codes not used as ccTLDs The codes EH and KP, although theoretically available as ccTLDs for Western Sahara and North Korea, have never been assigned and do not exist in DNS. Similarly, the new codes CS (Serbia and Montenegro) and AX (Åland Islands) are not yet assigned as ccTLDs (cs was previously assigned to Czechoslovakia). TL (post-independence East Timor), is now being introduced to replace TP.
All other current ISO 3166-1 codes have been assigned and do exist in DNS. However, some of these are effectively unused. In particular, the ccTLDs for the Norwegian territories Bouvet Island (bv) and Svalbard (sj) do exist in DNS, but no subdomains have been assigned, and it is Norid policy not to assign any at present.
Only one domain (dra.hmg.gb, for the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency) is still registered in gb (United Kingdom, although the letters actually stand for Great Britain, a subset of the UK) and no new registrations are being accepted for it. Sites in the UK use uk (see below). ccTLDs not in ISO 3166-1 Nine ccTLDs are currently in use despite not being ISO 3166-1 two-letter codes:
uk (United Kingdom): The ISO 3166-1 code for the United Kingdom is GB, however JANET had already selected uk as a top-level identifier for a pre-existing naming scheme, and this was incorporated into the top-level. gb was assigned with the intention of a transition, but this never occurred and the use of uk is now entrenched.
su (the obsolete ISO 3166-1 code for Soviet Union): The su managers stated in 2001 they will commence accepting new su registrations, but it is unclear whether this action is compatible with ICANN policy.
ac (Ascension Island), gg (Guernsey), im (Isle of Man) and je (Jersey): These codes came from IANA's decision in 1996 to allow the use of codes reserved in the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 reserve list for use by the Universal Postal Union. The decision was later reversed, and only these four ccTLDs were assigned under this rule.
eu (European Union): On September 25, 2000, ICANN decided to allow the use of any two-letter code in the ISO 3166-1 reserve list that is reserved for all purposes. Only EU currently meets this criterion. Following a decision by the EU's Council of Telecommunications Ministers in March 2002, progress has been slow, but a registry (named EURid) has been chosen by the European Commission, and criteria for allocation set: the current estimate is that the eu ccTLD will be open for registrations in 2005.
tp (the previous ISO 3166-1 code for East Timor): To be phased out in favour of tl during 2005.
yu (the previous ISO 3166-1 code for Serbia and Montenegro, when it was still known as Yugoslavia)
Unconventional ccTLD usage Lenient registration restrictions on certain ccTLDs has resulted in domain names like I.am, start.at and go.to. Other variations of ccTLD usage have been called domain hacks, where the Second-level domain and ccTLD are used together to form one word or one title. This has resulted in domains like blo.gs of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (gs), del.icio.us of United States of America (us), and cr.yp.to of Tonga (to). (Non country code TLDs have also been used, like inter.net which uses the .net gTLD, probably the first domain hack ever.) Historical ccTLDsThere are two ccTLDs which have been deleted after the corresponding 2-letter code was withdrawn from ISO_3166-1, namely cs (for Czechoslovakia) and zr (for Zaire). There may be a significant delay between withdrawal from ISO 3166-1 and deletion from the DNS; for example, ZR ceased to be an ISO 3166-1 code in 1997, but the zr ccTLD was not deleted until 2001. Other ccTLDs corresponding to obsolete ISO 3166-1 have not yet been deleted; in some cases they may never be deleted due to the amount of disruption this would cause for a heavily used ccTLD. In particular, the Soviet Union's ccTLD su remains in use more than a decade after SU was removed from ISO 3166-1.
Generic top-level domains
Unsponsored .biz | .com | .edu | .gov | .info | .int | .mil | .name | .net | .org | .pro
Sponsored .aero | .coop | .museum
Infrastructure .arpa | .root
Startup phase .cat | .jobs | .mobi | .tel | .post | .travel | .xxx
Proposed .asia | .geo | .kid | .mail | .web
Reserved .example | .invalid | .localhost | .test
Deleted/retired .nato
Generic top-level domains
Unsponsored .biz | .com | .edu | .gov | .info | .int | .mil | .name | .net | .org | .pro
Sponsored .aero | .coop | .museum
Infrastructure .arpa | .root
Startup phase .cat | .jobs | .mobi | .tel | .post | .travel | .xxx
Proposed .asia | .geo | .kid | .mail | .web
Reserved .example | .invalid | .localhost | .test
Deleted/retired .nato