This article needs additional citations for verification .(July 2017) |
Introduced | December 24, 1991 |
---|---|
TLD type | Country code top-level domain |
Status | Active |
Registry | .CO Internet S.A.S. |
Sponsor | .CO Internet S.A.S. |
Intended use | Second-level domains (widgets.co) and country-code second-level domain names (ccSLDs) are intended for global use:
|
Actual use | Also widely used in Colombia. Sometimes used in typosquatting due to misspellings of .com domains |
Registered domains | 2,018,450 (2016) [2] |
Registration restrictions | None |
Structure | Top-level registration now permitted. [3] |
Documents | Launch and Registration Rules (in English) Registration policies |
Dispute policies | UDRP |
DNSSEC | yes |
Registry website | www www |
.co is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) assigned to Colombia.
It is administered by .CO Internet S.A.S., [4] a subsidiary of Neustar since 2014. As of July 10,2010 [update] , there were no registration restrictions on second-level .co domains; any individual or entity in the world can register a .co domain.
.CO Internet S.A.S from Bogotá, Colombia, was appointed as the manager for the .co TLD through a public procurement process that took place in early 2009. .CO Internet received the re-delegation approval as the manager of the .co TLD by ICANN on December 9, 2009, and received formal confirmation of the request by the United States Department of Commerce on December 23, 2009.[ citation needed ]
Google treats .co as a generic top-level domain (gTLD) because "users and website owners frequently see [the domain] as being more generic than country-targeted." [5]
When they took over administration of the .CO domain, .CO Internet S.A.S. implemented new domain policies that were more flexible than the historic ones that had been administered by the University of the Andes. The new policies were adjusted to international best practices and defined in consultation with local and international communities. With the new policies, Colombia would be able to sell second-level domain names to the world, such as widgets.co, where previously only third-level domain names were available, such as widgets.com.co.
Notable single letter .CO domain names that have been allocated include:
[a.co] | Amazon |
[b.co] | Bestseller.com |
[g.co] | |
[m.co] | Volvo Car Mobility |
[o.co] | Overstock.com |
[s.co] | Snapchat |
[t.co] | X (formerly Twitter) |
[y.co] | Y.CO - The Yacht Company |
On September 15, 2010, .CO Internet S.A.S. had taken registrations for over 500,000 .CO domain names. [6] As of June 2011 [update] , more than 1 million .CO domains had been registered by people in over 200 countries and territories worldwide. [7] [ failed verification ] As of January 2014, that number has grown to over 1.6 million .CO domains registered.[ citation needed ] As of December 2018, there were 2.2 million. [8]
With respect to search engine optimization, Google confirmed that "it will rank .co domains appropriately if the content is globally targeted". [9]
.CO domains became available via the following timeline:
The third-level domain registrations closely mirror the "traditional" IANA .com / .net / .org / .gov / .edu / .mil hierarchy, with the addition of a national equivalent of .name. Different from registrations directly under .co, which are used to signal globally relevant interests, third-level domains are used to signal locally relevant business, organizations, academic institutions, and government.[ citation needed ]
IANA delegates ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes as country code top-level domains, and on December 24, 1991, the .co top-level domain was assigned to Colombia and delegated to the Universidad de los Andes. [11]
In 2001, the university began to consider the possibility of marketing the domain as an alternative to the generic top-level domains. The government of Colombia objected on the basis that the university, a private entity, did not have regulatory oversight of the TLD and the Minister of Communications, Angela Montoya Holguín, wrote to them requesting that they not continue. In turn the university wrote to ICANN, rejecting the government's objections and stating their intention to appoint a subcontractor to handle the commercialisation of the domain. [11]
At a meeting on December 11, 2001, Holguín asked the Consultative Chamber and Civil Service of the Council of State to consider three issues: [12]
In relation to these three issues, the meeting concluded that: [12]
In response to the Council of State meeting, the university wrote to ICANN on 12 February 2002 stating that it had abandoned plans to commercialise the domain, and that as it could "no longer bear the administrative and operational responsibilities" it wished to discontinue its responsibility for operating the domain. [11]
Finally, with the enactment of Law 1065 of 2006, the Ministry of Communications of Colombia initiated a public consultation process involving local and international participants, including members of the ICANN community, with the objective of defining the future of the .CO TLD. As a result of that process, through Resolution 001652 of 2008, the Ministry approved new policies that would govern the administration of the .CO TLD. [13] A public procurement process began which resulted in the award of the administration contract to .CO Internet SAS. Finally, on February 7, 2010, the administration of the TLD was transitioned from the University of Andes to .CO Internet SAS, under the regulatory and policy supervision of the Ministry of Communications of Colombia. [14] [15]
On July 20, 2010, second level .co domains became available to the rest of the world on a first-come, first-served basis. In 2014, .CO Internet S.A.S was acquired by Neustar for US$109 Million, and became a wholly owned subsidiary of Neustar. [16] It is responsible for the promotion, administration, and technical operation of the .co TLD. [6]
Only accredited registrars are able to sell .co domain names directly; other registrars selling .co domain names are acting as resellers. The list of accredited registrars is available on the .CO Internet website, [17] and as of October 2011 there are 20 accredited registrars. Some of the 20 registrars operate under multiple brands. [18]
A domain name registry is a database of all domain names and the associated registrant information in the top level domains of the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet that enables third party entities to request administrative control of a domain name. Most registries operate on the top-level and second-level of the DNS.
A domain name registrar is a company that manages the reservation of Internet domain names. A domain name registrar must be accredited by a generic top-level domain (gTLD) registry or a country code top-level domain (ccTLD) registry. A registrar operates in accordance with the guidelines of the designated domain name registries.
A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country, sovereign state, or dependent territory identified with a country code. All ASCII ccTLD identifiers are two letters long, and all two-letter top-level domains are ccTLDs.
.ae is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) in the Domain Name System of the Internet for the United Arab Emirates. It is administered by .aeDA which is part of the Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority of UAE (TDRA).
.il is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) of Israel, administered by the Israel Internet Association and managed by NIC - ISRAEL, which hosts the DNS root server and manages the Israeli Internet Exchange, that supports IPv4 and IPv6.
The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) is the organization that manages the .ca country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Canada. Its offices are located at 979 Bank Street in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. CIRA sets the policies and agendas that support Canada's internet community and Canada's involvement in international internet governance. It is a member-driven organization with membership open to all that hold a .ca domain. As of March 2023, there were more than 3.3 million active .ca domains.
.tw is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Taiwan. The domain name is based on the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code TW. The registry is maintained by the Taiwan Network Information Center (TWNIC), a Taiwanese non-profit organization appointed by the National Communications Commission (NCC) and the Ministry of Transportation and Communication. Since 1 March 2001, TWNIC has stopped allowing itself to sign up new domain names directly, instead allowing new registration through its contracted reseller registrars. As of May 2023, there are 17 registrars.
.uz is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Uzbekistan. Registry services were formerly operated by Euracom GmBH, but were later redelegated to UZINFOCOM. Registrations are taken directly at the second level, but the former registry also advertised the availability of registrations at the third level beneath co.uz and com.uz, and some domain names under other second-level names such as org.uz also exist.
.in is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for India. It was made available in 1989, four years after original generic top-level domains such as .com, .net and the country code like .us. It is currently administered by the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI).
.gr is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Greece. Registrations are processed via accredited registrars and domain names in Greek characters may also be registered.
.ky is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the Cayman Islands. The code was chosen as other possible options had already been allocated. Registration was limited to residents and registered companies in the Cayman Islands with a local address, but this restriction was removed in September 2015. The Cayman Islands also has the international three-letter code CYM and has won a bid to be awarded the .cym domain in a future expansion of the top-level domain space.
.so is the internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Somalia. After a long absence, the .so domain was officially relaunched on November 1, 2010, by .SO Registry, which is regulated by the nation's Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. It was launched through various accredited registrars around the world.
.na is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Namibia corresponding to the two letter code from the ISO-3166 standard.
INRegistry is the organisation responsible for the .in TLD and the native language internationalised domain name TLDs for the country. It was appointed by the government of India, and operates under the authority National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI).
.rs is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Serbia. The domain name registry that operates it is the Serbian National Internet Domain Registry (RNIDS). The letters rs stand for Republika Srbija/Република Србија.
NIC México or NIC.MX is the non-profit organization in charge of the registry for the .mx country code top-level domain (ccTLD). NIC Mexico is also responsible for the National Internet Registry which manages the allocation of IP address space to Mexican internet service providers.
.biz is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) in the Domain Name System of the Internet. It is intended for registration of domains to be used by businesses. The name is a phonetic spelling of the first syllable of business.
The Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP) is a computer network communications protocol standardized by a working group at the Internet Engineering Task Force in 2015, after experimental developments and thorough discussions. It is a successor to the WHOIS protocol, used to look up relevant registration data from such Internet resources as domain names, IP addresses, and autonomous system numbers.
.one is a top-level domain. It was proposed in ICANN's New generic top-level domain (gTLD) Program, and became available to the general public on May 20, 2015. One Registry and ARI Registry Services are the registries for the domain.
Pursuant to Article 3.4 of Resolution 001652, 2008, the Administrator of the .CO ccTLD submitted before the Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications during the Domain Names Policy Advisory Committee meeting held on November 9, 2009, a preliminary restricted domain names list. [...] the "Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications" (MINTIC for its acronym in Spanish) approved the following restricted domain name list
As a premium domain name space, .CO is available through a select list of Accredited Registrar partners and their resellers