Why is it that .com is such a widely used suffix to websites, what does it stand for and why does it matter what the suffixes are when the DNS server converts the websites to their respective IP addresses anyways?
In: Technology
“commercial”. People got the phrase “dotcom” in their heads in the early days of the Internet. It doesn’t matter what you use, but some of them are supposed to have different restrictions (org is supposed to be non-profit organisations, etc.). It’s just a free-for-all mess nowadays as they just charge more for the most popular ones. Some countries top-level-domains are more strictly regulated, but not always.
Although, in every non-US country, lots of people will consider .com to be inappropriate unless you’re a large multi-national corporation (technically the US companies should be using .co.us but they never do). If you’re french, you’re gonna prioritise .fr sites for French companies over .com – it just looks tacky and amateur to just register the .com blindly.
I have had this argument at several prestigious companies who “had to” have the .com and every extension they could get their hands on (.eu and so on). Eventually they all realise that you only need one, it makes no difference what it is, and having one controlled by your own country’s legislation works out far better (e.g. all the uk companies just got booted off .eu, .com’s can be shut down by the US registry whereas .co.uk has to go through Nominet, and so on).
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