Hiya guys, Just a quick intro - my name is Simon, from the UK, and I found the Digital Point forums after searching on Google for domain name discussion. I find it an interesting topic, even though I'm not a 'domainer' by profession. I apologise if this question has been asked many times before, but I don't really know how to word other than this: Why have domain names become so inconsistent? I'm speaking mostly of ccTLDs. For example, a UK-based company would have DOMAIN.co.uk domain, whereas a German, French, Spanish, Italian domain would simply be DOMAIN.de, DOMAIN.fr, DOMAIN.es, DOMAIN.it. How come these ccTLDs don't have the .co part? It gets even more inconsistent when you start considering .com.cn and .com.mx, .com.gr, .uk.com - the list goes on. Please put me out of my misery and explain why this happens in the world of domains! Thanks lads, Simon
Each country was assigned a tld in the 1990's and could develop it as they liked. At the time the internet was brand spanking new and there were no conventions to follow.