.io domains are sunsetting

A very interesting article, Ben. Thanks for sharing.

I'm hoping it will remain a BOT ultimately... but probably not with self hating morons in govt.

I recently heard of candy.com changing to candy.io. awkward....
 
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It will be interesting to see how this one turns out. I'd imagine it will become a generic TLD.

With the number of websites/business built on top of the domain extension, I can't imagine it would disappear.
 
seemly said:
It will be interesting to see how this one turns out. I'd imagine it will become a generic TLD.

With the number of websites/business built on top of the domain extension, I can't imagine it would disappear.
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Do you mean to say, some of the .io users/companies/owners will come together to buy it out?
 
ben said:
every.to

The Disappearance of an Internet Domain

How geopolitics can alter digital infrastructure
every.to

Time to start contacting those .io users to upsell them their .uk
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I think this just highlights the risk inherent in using foreign ccTLDs as domain hacks, where the state could become unstable and/or unfriendly to the state of a domain registrant, or even disappear altogether.

In the case of .co and .me, Colombia has recent history as a narco-state, and Montenegro has only been around as an independent country for 18 years and could disappear just as quickly. I wouldn't touch either of their ccTLDs with a barge pole.

username said:
I recently heard of candy.com changing to candy.io. awkward....
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https://blog.candy.io/platform-update-were-moving-to-a-new-domain/

I had to laugh at the first paragraph : "As part of our commitment to enhancing your Candy experience, we’re excited to announce that we will be transitioning our website domain from candy.com to candy.io in the near future."

Yeah right, but she completely forgets to mention that candy.com is now a sales lander "entertaining serious offers only".

seemly said:
It will be interesting to see how this one turns out. I'd imagine it will become a generic TLD.
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Isn't there some ICANN or IANA rule that says two-letter TLDs can only be ccTLDs?
 
Jeff said:
I had to laugh at the first paragraph : "As part of our commitment to enhancing your Candy experience, we’re excited to announce that we will be transitioning our website domain from candy.com to candy.io in the near future."

Yeah right, but she completely forgets to mention that candy.com is now a sales lander "entertaining serious offers only".
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Alert popup on the root domain:

The migration to candy.io is now complete! Please add info@candy.io to your safe list to avoid our emails landing in spam. Simply go to your email settings, find the Filters/Spam section and add us to your Safe Sender list.
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:ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:
 
Jeff said:
Isn't there some ICANN or IANA rule that says two-letter TLDs can only be ccTLDs?
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I've no idea, actually!

Looking at ISO standards, there is this: https://www.iso.org/iso-3166-country-codes.html, which states:

"The country codes can be represented either as a two-letter code (alpha-2) which is recommended as the general-purpose code, a three-letter code (alpha-3) which is more closely related to the country name and a three-digit numeric code (numeric-3) which can be useful if you need to avoid using Latin script.

The codes for subdivisions are represented as the alpha-2 code for the country, followed by up to three characters. For example ID-RI is the Riau province of Indonesia and NG-RI is the Rivers province in Nigeria. Names and codes for subdivisions are usually taken from relevant official national information sources.

The formerly used codes are four-letter codes (alpha-4). How the alpha-4 codes are constructed depends on the reason why the country name has been removed."

But there’s no outright technical reason why a two-letter gTLD couldn’t exist, but it’s a matter of policy and convention.
 
Do you reckon if the UK ceased to be (Ireland reunification, for example) and we became just GB that .co.uk owners would still get preference to .gb or would it become .co.gb and .gb for .co.uk and .uk?

I think we should just drop the colonial bit from our name and use .UK...
 
username said:
Do you reckon if the UK ceased to be (Ireland reunification, for example) and we became just GB that .co.uk owners would still get preference to .gb or would it become .co.gb and .gb for .co.uk and .uk?

I think we should just drop the colonial bit from our name and use .UK...
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How weird does .co.gb look? Eww.

I'm sure Nominet would be able to mess up that decision quite profoundly, but you'd think they'd opt for the singular '.gb'.

It would be hilarious if the .co in .co.uk was for 'colonial' (fortunately it's 'commercial').
 
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seemly said:
I've no idea, actually!

Looking at ISO standards, there is this: https://www.iso.org/iso-3166-country-codes.html, which states:

"The country codes can be represented either as a two-letter code (alpha-2) which is recommended as the general-purpose code, a three-letter code (alpha-3) which is more closely related to the country name and a three-digit numeric code (numeric-3) which can be useful if you need to avoid using Latin script.

The codes for subdivisions are represented as the alpha-2 code for the country, followed by up to three characters. For example ID-RI is the Riau province of Indonesia and NG-RI is the Rivers province in Nigeria. Names and codes for subdivisions are usually taken from relevant official national information sources.

The formerly used codes are four-letter codes (alpha-4). How the alpha-4 codes are constructed depends on the reason why the country name has been removed."

But there’s no outright technical reason why a two-letter gTLD couldn’t exist, but it’s a matter of policy and convention.
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I can't find an actual rule either, but this sentence (or a minor variation of it) appears on multiple websites:

"All ASCII ccTLD identifiers are two letters long, and all two-letter top-level domains are ccTLDs."

The problem with allowing .io to become a gTLD is that it would establish a precedent and make it difficult to reject applications for other unused two letter strings to become gTLDs. This would end what is at least a convention, if not an actual rule, so I can't see it happening.
 
Jeff said:
I can't find an actual rule either, but this sentence (or a minor variation of it) appears on multiple websites:

"All ASCII ccTLD identifiers are two letters long, and all two-letter top-level domains are ccTLDs."

The problem with allowing .io to become a gTLD is that it would establish a precedent and make it difficult to reject applications for other unused two letter strings to become gTLDs. This would end what is at least a convention, if not an actual rule, so I can't see it happening.
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Something similar happened to .su when the Soviet Union was disbanded and replaced with .ru [1], so I suppose, perhaps it could be kept on. But I feel like the exception with .su was that it was demanded by the Government. I highly doubt any Government gives a shit about .io, which is dominated by tech companies.
 
ben said:
Something similar happened to .su when the Soviet Union was disbanded and replaced with .ru [1], so I suppose, perhaps it could be kept on. But I feel like the exception with .su was that it was demanded by the Government. I highly doubt any Government gives a shit about .io, which is dominated by tech companies.
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That was the point that the article that you shared was making, that they won't want to get bitten again with a .yu or .su situation.
 
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I too read that DNW article late last night. I didn't really understand the point he was making. I re-read it now and I still don't.

At the top of the article it reads "It’s highly unlikely registrants will lose their domains because of the UK’s treaty.".

But then the treaty isn't mentioned... Just that he thinks it won't go away cause people use it.

Maybe I'm missing something.
 
username said:
I too read that DNW article late last night. I didn't really understand the point he was making. I re-read it now and I still don't.

At the top of the article it reads "It’s highly unlikely registrants will lose their domains because of the UK’s treaty.".

But then the treaty isn't mentioned... Just that he thinks it won't go away cause people use it.

Maybe I'm missing something.
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No, I don't think you missed anything. I think it's just opinion right now.

I think this opinion is due to the popularity of the extension - that's it. As we know, money talks.
 
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Agreed. We will see where the money goes. We all know how much money is in tech. Perhaps ICANN are banking on that.
 
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