why do websites have different endings (com, net, org) what do they mean?
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Its just a different “kingdom” of website/domain classification thought up as a means to govern and organize content on the internet. The original idea by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (the internet “gods” in charge of such things) was that each “top level domain” would contain websites and email resources that were particular for a certain “type”. For example, .edu would only be schools, colleges and universities. .com would only be for businesses. .gov would be for governments (the US one in particular). There would be TLDs one for each country (.ca, .us, .nz etc.).
Each TLD would be administered and regulated by a designated authority. For example there’s a Department of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure that governs .gov stuff. The pentagon administers .mil addresses.
The idea is that proper functioning of the internet – at least as far as domain names (google.com) and IP addresses are concerned – requires a top down regulation. Of names, of IP spaces – these things need to be controlled top-down so the routers and junk that make the internet work know where to go if they need to ask where send something. So at the top is the IANA (which is a non-profit global organization). Then each TLD administrator and so on. The changes to the domain name system (DNS) that makes the web work flow seamlessly up and down this hierarchy. Otherwise it would be a free-for-all god knows how it would end up.
Now, in practice, administration of this stuff requires its own infrastructure, so in reality a lot of these top level domains are administered by a handful of companies or bodies – Verisign and Donuts Inc. (yeah I dunno either) for example handle a LOT of the non-country specific domains.
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