why end with .co.uk instead of uk

Zip · 14 Sep 2006 at 17:10

Al Vallario said:
Just to point out, .com is not the American suffix. It is regulated by an American company, but technically speaking it is an international domain name (like .net, .org etc.) which does not denote a country of origin.

Down here we have .net.au and .org.au and

But we also ave just plane .orgs and .nets and .coms Depends if te company wants a .com or got to the address first or not

Psyk · 14 Sep 2006 at 17:10

Crispy Pigeon said:
I suppose because of their extensive violent history, nationalism and for a couple of further reasons, e.g., Scotland's own legal system.
It annoys me too anyway, although they are slightly more than just 'regions', technically called 'home' countries or nations.

Yeah that's true. Even so, US law varies quite a lot between states yet each state isn't considered a country.

Nikias · 14 Sep 2006 at 17:13

Psyk said:
Yeah that's true. Even so, US law varies quite a lot between states yet each state isn't considered a country.

I know and Germany, for example, was formed even later than most of Great Britain, but they don't expect to play Prussia, Bavaria etc. in FIFA competitions.

It's just our stubborn islander ways I guess.

robmiller · 14 Sep 2006 at 17:14

Al Vallario said:
Just to point out, .com is not the American suffix. It is regulated by an American company, but technically speaking it is an international domain name (like .net, .org etc.) which does not denote a country of origin.

ICANN is only nominally American. It's US-based but international in membership and scope

fini · 14 Sep 2006 at 17:16

Psyk said:
Yeah that's true. Even so, US law varies quite a lot between states yet each state isn't considered a country.

Scotland has its own parliament though...

fini

Psyk · 14 Sep 2006 at 17:17

fini said:
Scotland has its own parliament though...

fini

US states have their own institutions comparable to a parliament but they are not countries.

Zip · 14 Sep 2006 at 17:22

Psyk said:
US states have their own institutions comparable to a parliament but they are not countries.

To me Scotland England and Wales are separate countries

The UK is more of an Empire then a Country IMO

Nikias · 14 Sep 2006 at 17:25

Psyk said:
US states have their own institutions comparable to a parliament but they are not countries.

Indeed, they're a lot more powerful than the Scottish Parliament and could not be dissolved by the US central government like the devolved assemblies can be here.

stoofa · 14 Sep 2006 at 17:36

Every country is given it's own country code to do with as it sees fit.
A registry will win the right to run the country code and they are in charge of the name space.
For the .uk namespace Nominet are in charge.

There are no hard and fast rules as to what a country registry can or should offer.
Lets just take two examples where the local registry have decided that they will sell domin names in the top level of their name space.
France & Germany.

So for example if I was a famous software company I could purchase the domains microsoft.fr and microsoft.de
Now is this such a good thing? It depends on how you look at it.
Whereas microsoft.fr and microsoft.de are both easy to remember domains it does restrict the number of available domains.

Nominet on the other hand decided that they would not sell any domains in their TLD space and instead would create numerous SLD's instead, examples being:

co.uk
org.uk
me.uk
ltd.uk
net.uk
school.uk
ac.uk
police.uk
nhs.uk

Some of these are heavily restricted SLD's whereas others are freely open and can be registered by all.
The advantage here is that it opens up a lot more domain names for everyone - if the co.uk isn't available then they can look at the org.uk, then the me.uk.
Gives people three bites of the cherry so to speak.
Should the current name spaces become too crowded then Nominet could always open yet more SLD's and make even more names available.
The only major surprise is that Nominet have not yet released a com.uk SLD as many feel this would be quite desireable.

.com, .net, .org, .info are all considered "US" domain names which they are not.
These are true TLD's.
The US own the .us country code and their local registry decide how best to operate this.

Psyk · 14 Sep 2006 at 17:51

Zip said:
To me Scotland England and Wales are separate countries

The UK is more of an Empire then a Country IMO

Funny thing is, Wales was considered just part of England until 1967. Wales has in fact never been considered an independent sovereign entity. So it never really even has been a country.

fatmas · 14 Sep 2006 at 18:27

I was taught that .com is a company that trades in more than one country.
.co.uk is an english company or the english department of a company

.ac.uk is a educational facility
.org.uk is a non profit organisation

.edu.uk is another educational one..
etc...

The_Dark_Side · 14 Sep 2006 at 19:19

.co stands for company.
it dates back to a time when the business and education sectors were almost exclusivley the only users of this new fangled internet.

fatmas · 14 Sep 2006 at 19:20

Which is why you get .co.juhdf country name
Although a lot of countries just use their abbreviation without the .co

.pt, .it etcccc...

norm · 14 Sep 2006 at 20:01

.com = commerical
.co.uk = means of retaining control of .uk TLD

Spyhop · 14 Sep 2006 at 21:30

I think it's rather pointless. Nobody cares whether a .co.uk domain is a company or not.

The likes of google.se for Sweden or google.be for Belgium make sense.