It’s the de-facto standard. Everyone tries to get hold of the .com domain name when they’re setting up their business and choosing its online identity. And in the past I’ve always advised customers to have the .com as the default site, and the .co.uk site routing to it for those who type in the wrong one.
But it seems that whilst the world sees a .com as non-geographic, the US still control the registration, and have used this power to effectively cripple a few businesses recently.
The sites in question were four of the biggest online gambling sites. These sites aren’t run out of the US, because of their strict laws on gambling. But because the sites used a .com address they were vulnerable to shutdown by the FBI. (For the full details, see this article.)
This has happened before. Vb.ly was shut down by Libya, and during the current troubles sites like bit.ly must be concerned. (Business insider article on the subject.)
Pomcat itself did ponder on buying one of these fun, short domain names. Pom.cat was free, and would have been a nice domain to have. But in reality, it wouldn’t have been sensible on a number of counts:
- People expect a .com or .co.uk domain name, and that’s what they’ll guess if you tell them your business name.
- Some people would assume pom.cat was some sort of error or mistake.
But the final nail in the pom.cat coffin was that the .cat domain comes with some pretty severe strings attached. Within 6 months of launching the site, we would have had to make sure the majority of its content was available in Catalan, and we would have had to promote the Catalan culture. Hmm. Catalan isn’t all that high up on the list of my priorities right now…
So the lesson is this: Don’t blindly assume that all domain extensions are equal. Even the most obvious choices can impact your business. If you want to keep control of your site, consider the legal entity that runs your domain. When in doubt, .co.uk is a good shout for UK-registered businesses.
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