3 ms·

Except nobody uses the .us tld, but pretty much every every Japanese company is on a .co.jp

by eloisant 23d ago

adw 22d ago
Schools use it!
- toast0 22d ago
  Based on my small sample of schools, all of the ones that were using locality based names under ca.us have migrated elsewhere, including to 2nd level domains under .us.
jomar 22d ago
> Except nobody uses the .us tld This is a bug, not a feature.
SenHeng 22d ago
It used to be that only Japanese corporations could register a .co.jp while anyone else anywhere could register for a .jp. So I had several .jp domains registered through Gandi.net. The issue is that .jp registered outside of a few Japanese registrars are legally not allowed to offer Whois privacy.
ButlerianJihad 22d ago
The .us domain should’ve been universally useful for state and municipal governments, but most of those began registering directly under .gov, and not even in an orderly hierarchy under .st.gov But that was simply the easiest way to market your website as a trusted government entity. And now nobody has ever heard of .us domains in active use.
- ocdtrekkie 22d ago
  .us was primarily a hierarchy structure which in practice made confusing and hard to remember domain names, whereas .gov addresses hand out single domains which are generally easy to remember.
  - ButlerianJihad 22d ago
    Personally, I never saw anything confusing about city.state.us; the hierarchy was organized perfectly logically in the 3-tier jurisdictional structure that every American schoolboy knows by 3rd grade. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.us https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.us But your point about them being rather longer and difficult to remember stands, and the same for a .gov, which could be shorter and catchier. However amusingly, .us opened up second-level registrations 24 years ago, which means that any qualifying entity could have their name registered directly under .us, which is obviously recognizable, and also one character shorter, than a .gov registration. However, by that time, I believe that .gov had increased in stature so that registering governmental entities under .gov carried more certainty of conveying official status than anything under .us. Also sadly, QR Codes and URL shorteners today sort of obviate the need to directly register the shortest possible domain name. I don't know: I was always kind of fond of the .us hierarchy, and I'm just personally sad that it's fading away.
    - ocdtrekkie 22d ago
      City/state/US is logical, the problem is most other hierarchies confuse people. For instance k12 subdomains for schools couldn't use that nomenclature because school districts do not map cleanly to towns. And that's before you talk about fire departments, townships, libraries, park districts, and countless other governmental bodies and districts which have overlapping boundaries of their own. .gov certainly cares a level of exclusionary access that isn't really true of .us. Only one entity, the US federal government, can decide to hand someone a .gov address. And generally there is few signals harder to fake or impersonate than one.
    - flomo 22d ago
      > city.state.us In reality, it wasn't that simple, and a lot of those .us domains looked like line noise. Government sites are used to distribute public information. They need something they can print on a poster/sign. Not some bogus 'logical' hierarchy.
  - stephen_g 22d ago
    It’s not something anyone else in the world seems to struggle with, where there are *.gov.uk, *.edu.au etc. If anything the .gov, .mil and .edu being just American is confusing, as well plainly inappropriate (it feels like an American cultural imperialist thing to people from outside the US). It would have been much better if those had been retired decades ago and moved to under the .us TLD, so e.g. whatever.edu would become whatever.edu.us like every other country. Any existing domains on .gov, .mil, .edu etc. should only be allowed to exist as 301 redirects.

Except nobody uses the .us tld, but pretty much every every Japanese company is on a .co.jp

adw 22d ago

Schools use it!

toast0 22d ago
Based on my small sample of schools, all of the ones that were using locality based names under ca.us have migrated elsewhere, including to 2nd level domains under .us.

jomar 22d ago

> Except nobody uses the .us tld This is a bug, not a feature.

SenHeng 22d ago

It used to be that only Japanese corporations could register a .co.jp while anyone else anywhere could register for a .jp. So I had several .jp domains registered through Gandi.net. The issue is that .jp registered outside of a few Japanese registrars are legally not allowed to offer Whois privacy.

ButlerianJihad 22d ago

The .us domain should’ve been universally useful for state and municipal governments, but most of those began registering directly under .gov, and not even in an orderly hierarchy under .st.gov But that was simply the easiest way to market your website as a trusted government entity. And now nobody has ever heard of .us domains in active use.

ocdtrekkie 22d ago
.us was primarily a hierarchy structure which in practice made confusing and hard to remember domain names, whereas .gov addresses hand out single domains which are generally easy to remember.
- ButlerianJihad 22d ago
  Personally, I never saw anything confusing about city.state.us; the hierarchy was organized perfectly logically in the 3-tier jurisdictional structure that every American schoolboy knows by 3rd grade. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.us https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.us But your point about them being rather longer and difficult to remember stands, and the same for a .gov, which could be shorter and catchier. However amusingly, .us opened up second-level registrations 24 years ago, which means that any qualifying entity could have their name registered directly under .us, which is obviously recognizable, and also one character shorter, than a .gov registration. However, by that time, I believe that .gov had increased in stature so that registering governmental entities under .gov carried more certainty of conveying official status than anything under .us. Also sadly, QR Codes and URL shorteners today sort of obviate the need to directly register the shortest possible domain name. I don't know: I was always kind of fond of the .us hierarchy, and I'm just personally sad that it's fading away.
  - ocdtrekkie 22d ago
    City/state/US is logical, the problem is most other hierarchies confuse people. For instance k12 subdomains for schools couldn't use that nomenclature because school districts do not map cleanly to towns. And that's before you talk about fire departments, townships, libraries, park districts, and countless other governmental bodies and districts which have overlapping boundaries of their own. .gov certainly cares a level of exclusionary access that isn't really true of .us. Only one entity, the US federal government, can decide to hand someone a .gov address. And generally there is few signals harder to fake or impersonate than one.
  - flomo 22d ago
    > city.state.us In reality, it wasn't that simple, and a lot of those .us domains looked like line noise. Government sites are used to distribute public information. They need something they can print on a poster/sign. Not some bogus 'logical' hierarchy.
- stephen_g 22d ago
  It’s not something anyone else in the world seems to struggle with, where there are *.gov.uk, *.edu.au etc. If anything the .gov, .mil and .edu being just American is confusing, as well plainly inappropriate (it feels like an American cultural imperialist thing to people from outside the US). It would have been much better if those had been retired decades ago and moved to under the .us TLD, so e.g. whatever.edu would become whatever.edu.us like every other country. Any existing domains on .gov, .mil, .edu etc. should only be allowed to exist as 301 redirects.