Hacker News Reader

Comment by da_n | Hacker News Reader

.us is great, I too am surprised at how little I see it in use. Aside form the more restrictive application process, I think it partly stems from the fact .us came after .com and also initially a lot of users had confusion about TLDs (the type of people who would recite addresses like "h-t-t-p-colon-forward-slash-forward-slash-w-w-w-dot-example-dot-com" instead of just "example dot com"). Rightly or wrongly a lot of companies played it safe and went for .com.

On a related note, I have always disliked the fact that UK TLD disallows use of .uk, instead lumped with the crappy .co.uk.

View on HN

> I have always disliked the fact that UK TLD disallows use of .uk,

Nominet have already floated the idea of opening up .UK for top level registration [1]. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they try and milk the market for topical 2LDs either.

I actually think it's a bad idea. Keeping a ccTLDs level reserved seems sensible to me. For instance, only UK Limited companies are allowed to register .ltd.uk domains.

[1] http://www.nominet.org.uk/how-participate/policy-development...

The idea to use the top level was rejected, thankfully. I like the way the domains are categorised, so you can tell when something is a school, government, etc. It gives domains a certain level of assurance and authority.

> The idea to use the top level was rejected, thankfully.

It's still on their homepage (pink "Consultation" box) and the wording is "revised proposals". Worryingly they're also looking at introducing residency checks for individual registrations.

One think doesn't prevent the other; our governmental sites are still .gov.pt, even though .pt is open for registration.

It's just a matter of reserving those domains.

As icebraining says, there is no reason for the 2 to be mutually exclusive.

I would mind less if there was more universal consistency, for example in France you have lemonde.fr, in Germany you have spiegel.de, in the UK you have independent.co.uk, Japan is japantimes.co.jp.

when MPs staff tell people their email address, they almost always have to say it two or three times before people believe them - the domain is simply parliament.uk (similarly, nhs.uk ).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com