Ever wonder why the UK home page for Amazon is located at amazon.co.uk and not simply amazon.uk?
It’s one of those quirks of the domain name system. Countries have control over the administration of their country codes, which means country-specific standards, such as .com.br for Brazil and co.kr for South Korea. And, once set in place, these standards get awfully difficult to change.
But we could be on the cusp of some global harmonization.
Nominet, the UK registry, is proposing a .co-free option.
There is a twist to the proposal. Nominent wants to ensure that .uk is extra secure, with mandated DNSSEC. And the domain would be quite a bit more expensive, intended, it appears, for businesses and global brands (not so much individuals).
Consumers naturally won’t care about these details, though they will benefit from URLs that three characters shorter.
And that’s a good thing.
Stéphane Van Gelder writes that it’s about time.
So weigh in with your feedback and we’ll see if Nominet moves forward.