LoneStarEve
Member
Not quite true… (I used to work for a domain registration company in the late 90s).gov is the USA (because my the time the country code TLDs were brought in they had already grabbed the root ones, .org, .com, .net).
Anything .uk is the UK
.us is the TLD for the USA and was created in 1985 the same as the generic ones (like .com) that are non country specific and some of the country specific ones like .uk
.com just means commercial and it isn’t tied to the US at all. In theory if your site is US focused (e.g. local coffee shop) you should be on a .us domain, with a non country specific business like Starbucks being a .com
But .com as a signature caught on in the mid 90s with many ppl unaware of this new thing called the internet (technically websites) and associating it with a website because they just kept hearing .com .com .com on the news so whenever people remember your site address they just automatically try .com first so there’s a disadvantage to having a .us or .uk hence everyone registers .com and we have a shortage of available names despite plenty of other TLDs available. The internet boom with the non tech public in the 90s was a blessing and a curse…
The exception is .gov which *is* US government and comes about from the fact the internet was a US government project in the early days. So the US *does* have that one as exclusively it’s own.