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by Raizel on January 10th, 2008

Raizel

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Why is it that web address for the united states are .com but for other countries it is an initial of their country. Like, the uk it is .uk(some have to put a .co in front of the initials also). Also we have multiple ones like .org, .gov, and .edu. Why?

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Answers. 4 helpful answers below.

  • by Stableboy on January 10th, 2008

    Stableboy

    It's a leftover artifact of the way the Internet domain name system evolved.

    Because the Internet protocols were invented in by the U.S. military (DARPA), the whole scheme was very US-centric. As the Internet grew and became very international, it became obvious that there was a need to expand the specificity and range of the "top level domains" (the last segment of the host addresses).

    So each country got it's own extension, but the old extensions lived on to minimize disruption.

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  • by Midgardsormr on January 10th, 2008

    Midgardsormr

    The top level domain .com is intended for use by commercial entities world-wide. Unfortunately, there are very few viable names remaining under .com. It is an open domain, so anyone can register a .com, even if they're not commercial.

    .net is intended for use by organizations that contribute to Internet infrastructer--ISPs and the like. It is open, though, and anyone may register a .net domain name. Like .com, they're mostly all taken.

    The United States does have a national top level domain: .us

    A clarification on .edu: Only accredited post-secondary institutions are eligible to apply for a .edu domain name. That restriction was put in place in 2001, so high schools that had purchased .net domains prior to then are permitted to keep them.

    .mil is reserved exclusively for use by the United States military.

    You can find a complete list of top-level domains and a brief description at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains

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  • by Brian I on January 11th, 2008

    Brian I

    Having a dot com address is not a reliable indicator that the company is US based - .com is available to any country anywhere in the world. In common with every other country the USA has an identifying suffix, which is .us, they just choose not to use it, for reasons one can only guess at.

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  • by mjordan23 on January 10th, 2008

    mjordan23

    The reasons for the mutipul adresses are
    1.com-these websites are run by a company. The reasons for unintals are mostly unknown.
    2.org-this website is run by a non profit organization that is in someway helping commiunity, they do not have to pay.
    3.gov-this website is run by the goverment.
    4.edu-this website is run by a school. Usually only high schools and collages use this, grade schools use .org.
    The reason we dont use .USA is because... we just dont.Its like the metric system

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