Here's what wikipedia has to say: "The domain COM was installed as one of the first set of top-level domains when the Domain Name System was first implemented

Here's what wikipedia has to say: "The domain COM was installed as one of the first set of top-level domains when the Domain Name System was first implemented for use on the Internet in January 1985. The domain was administered by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), however the department contracted the domain maintenance to SRI International. SRI created DDN-NIC, also known as SRI-NIC, or simply the NIC (Network Information Center),[3] then accessible online with the domain name nic.ddn.mil. Beginning October 1, 1991, an operations contract was awarded to Government Systems Inc. (GSI), which sub-contracted it to Network Solutions Inc. (NSI).[4]" > And how come there is a ".us" TLD? Because every country gets a two letter country code TLD. > It may seem that way from where you sit (USA by any chance?), but I think you'll find the rest of the world sees com/net/org as transcending countries, hence their value. Just because you see certain TLDs as transcending countries doesn't mean that they actually do. Besides, having jursdiction over a TLD is necessary to deal with sites that have servers in multiple countries. How else do you handle jurisdiction for a website with multiple servers in multiple countries and that advertises to multiple countries, some of which don't have a server inside that country's border?