Why is .gov only for US government agencies?

Mon Oct 20 16:50:28 UTC 2014

On Oct 19, 2014, at 5:05 AM, Matthew Petach <mpetach at netflight.com> wrote:

> Wondering if some of the long-time list members
> can shed some light on the question--why is the
> .gov top level domain only for use by US
> government agencies?  Where do other world
> powers put their government agency domains?
> 
> With the exception of the cctlds, shouldn't the
> top-level gtlds be generically open to anyone
> regardless of borders?
> 
> Would love to get any info about the history
> of the decision to make it US-only.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Matt

The short version is that that names were a process. In the beginning, hosts simply had names. When DNS came into being, names were transformed from “some-name” to “some-name.ARPA”. A few of what we now all gTLDs then came into being - .com, .net, .int, .mil, .gov, .edu - and the older .arpa names quickly fell into disuse. 

ccTLDs came later.

I’ve been told that the reason God was able to create the earth in seven days was that He had no installed base. We do. The funny thing is that you’ll see a reflection of the gTLDs underneath the ccTLDs of a number of countries - .ac, .ed, and the like.
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