Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Top-Level Domain Names

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

Every day, everyone who uses the internet uses the Domain Name System. The key to the domain name system lies in the highest level of the system, the top-level domains. These are the domains such as .com, .org, and .net. While you are probably very familiar with a few of these, there are actually a lot more. A whole lot more.  A lucky few top-level domain name holders actually managed to hit the jackpot.  Learn more about top-level domain names and how they are organized and distributed on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors Quince Go to quince.com/daily for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order! Mint Mobile Get your 3-month Unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com/eed Stash Go to get.stash.com/EVERYTHING to see how you can receive $25 towards your first stock purchase. Subscribe to the podcast!  https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Austin Oetken & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/  Disce aliquid novi cotidie Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every day, everyone who uses the internet uses the domain name system. The key to the domain name system lies in the highest level of the system, the top level domains. These are the domains such as dot com, dot org, and dot net. While you're probably very familiar with a few of these, there's actually a lot more, a whole lot more. And a lucky few top level domain name holders actually managed to hit the jackpot. Learn more about top level domain names and how they're organized and distributed on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Did you ever hear about the selfie that solved a murder or the jury that used a Ouija board to speak to a victim? If that made you pause, you need to listen to Morning Cup of Murder. I'm Karina B. Minasurfer, and every single day on Morning Cup of Murder, I tell one chilling

true crime story tied to that exact day in history. With over 2,500 episodes to binge, you'll never run out of dark stories to start your morning with. Go listen to Morning Cup of Murder, wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, stay safe. In a previous episode, I covered how the domain name system works. It's basically like a glorified

phone book for people who remember phone books. You put an easy-to-remember name, and it will then forward you to an internet protocol address, which is a not-so-easy to remember string of numbers. The domain name system is a hierarchical system. You have top-level domain names or T-L-Ds, and then second-level domain names and so on. Usually you just need two levels, but you can't have more. In this episode, I'm going to take a different approach and do a deeper dive on just the top-level domain names because the story behind them is really interesting. For starters, there are way more top-level domain names than most people realize. Depending on how you define it, there are between 1,400 and 1,500 top-level domain names.

And most of us only recognize a small handful of these. broadly speaking, there are two types of top-level domain names, generic TLDs and country TLDs. Generic TLDs are the ones you're familiar with, such as dot com, dot org, dot gov, dot EDU, and others. Country TLDs are those like dot UK, dot U.S. dotRU and dot CN, and others which all have exactly two letters. The origin of this system dates back not only before the creation of the Internet, but even before the creation of computers. It dates back to the years immediately after the Second World War. This era witnessed the creation of numerous multinational organizations and treaties,

including the UN, the International Monetary Fund, and NATO. One of the problems that was addressed in the post-war period was standards. Standards are vital in any industry or system that has a multinational reach. Perhaps the best example of a system that didn't have standards is electricity. When electrical standards were developed, they were developed on the national level. And the result is that today we have a hodgepodge of different voltages and different electrical outlet types all over the world. Anyone who has traveled extensively has had to deal with the confusing mess of adapters that exist everywhere. There were various industries that required the development of technical standards to facilitate trade and manufacturing.

To that end, the International Organization for Standardization, or ISO, was established in 1947. If you've ever seen something that said that they were ISO certified, that's the same organization. The ISO covers a wide range of different industry standards. However, for the purpose of this episode, one of the things that they addressed was the issue of country names. Before the ISO, naming conventions for international postal codes and recordkeeping were inconsistent. The United States could be referred to as US or U.S.D.S.A or USA. Germany might appear as D-E, G-E-R, GE, or just D. Switzerland was C-H in some systems and S-U-I in others.

And then there was the problem of countries that had similar names, Switzerland and Sweden, Austria and Australia. If you were to write down the abbreviation A-U-S, which country were you referring to? This was something that was begging for a standard. In the early 1970s, the ISO finally got around, to solving the problem. The ISO's Technical Committee 46, which covered information and documentation, and later Technical Committee 37, which covered terminology and language resources, developed the framework that became ISO 3166. ISO 3166 was published in 1974 and was titled, Codes for the

representation of names of countries. It established two-letter and three-letter codes as concise identifiers for all countries and territories. The two-letter form was modeled partly on the international vehicle registration codes and postal abbreviations, which were already familiar in cross-border use. The two-letter codes went well beyond formal sovereign states and included territories in other subnational regions, such as Puerto Rico, Aruba, Gibraltar, and Antarctica. The ISO has also updated the list as new countries were created and some were deleted as they were For example, Zaire used to be ZR, and when it became the Democratic Republic of Congo, it was changed to CD. None of this has anything to do with the Internet. In fact, the domain name system is not under the

purview of the International Organization for Standardization. Fast forward to 1984. The early Internet was literally a list of IP addresses that you had to know to connect to another computer. The domain name system hierarchy was designed in 1983. in 1984, led by UCLA computer scientist John Postel. The proposal that they came up with had a limited number of generic top-level domain names. These included dotARPA.com, dot edu.gov.org. When it was finally implemented, the dot-net tlde was included as well. In addition to the generic TLDs, they also added country TLDs.

Here Postel faced a problem. coming of a list of countries, especially for something as official as the internet, was a potential political landmine. His solution was to avoid making a list of countries altogether. Instead, they just adopted the ISO list of two-letter country codes. And by doing so, they just let the ISO, a neutral third party, deal with the problem. For the most part, when the ISO makes a change to the list, the internet corporation for assigned names and numbers or ICAMN, updates the associated top-level domain name. However, there are some exceptions. DotSU, the top-level domain name for the Soviet Union, still

exists, but ICAN has announced recently that it's going to be phased out and will be gone by the year 2030. In 1986, the dot-int TLD was added, which was intended for international organizations, such as the World Health Organization and the African Union. It's still in use, but only a very small number of organizations can utilize it. As the internet exploded in popularity in the 1990s, it became obvious that there was a need for more top-level domain names. The dot-com TLD was becoming crowded and other TLDs had such niche uses that they were hardly ever used at all. In 1998, the previously mentioned ICANN was established to manage the domain name system. They put out a call

for proposals for new TLDs in August of 2000, and in November they announced new generic TLDs, these.aero, dot biz, co-op, dot info, dot museum, dot name, and dot pro. They went through the same process in 2003, and in March of 2004, they announced dotasia, dot cat, dot jobs, dot mobi, dot tell, and dot travel. The triple-x TLD was introduced in 2011 and dot post in 2012. However, the question was now being raised, was it really necessary to go through this process every time to make new TLDs?

Couldn't any organization just make their own TLD? There was no technical reason why they couldn't just do that. In 2012, they vastly increased the number of top-level domains by allowing organizations to bid on their own TLDs. When the application window opened in July 12th of 2012, it drew 1,930 applications for 1,409,000,000, distinct TLDs. The current fee for a custom top-level domain is an upfront payment of $185,000, and then a fixed

annual fee of $25,000, as well as a variable fee of $0.25 per domain registration under the TLD. Some of the TLDs that were originally sold went up for competitive bidding. Dot app was won by Google for $25 million, dot shop was sold for $41.5 million, and Dot Web was auctioned off for $135 million. And this is why there are so many top-level domains now, the vast majority of which you have probably never heard of. Apple bought the rights to dot Apple, and they hardly ever use it.

They purchased it, so no one else could have it. So of the 1400 and something TLDs that exist, the most popular are the ones that you're familiar with. Dot com.org.net.com, dot info, etc. However, some have a shocking number of domains registered under them that you've probably never come across, or if you did, it was probably spam or a fishing attack. These include dot top, dot loan, and dot XYZ, which have millions of domains registered. Now I want to go back to the country TLDs.

Every country, no matter how big or how small, has its own top-level domain. When the ISO created the country codes back in 1974, they had nothing special in mind. They certainly didn't know that the internet would one day exist. As each of these countries can do with their TLDs as they see fit, some have utilized their TLDs as a significant source of revenue. In particular, two small countries, Tuvalu and Micronesia, hit the TLD jackpot. Their TLDs were dot TV and dot FM. For Tuvalu, the breakthrough came in 1998 in 2000. Tuvalu granted exclusive dot TV rights to commercial partners in deals that delivered tens of millions of dollars to the government and transformed a tiny national asset into a major source of governmental revenue.

Early arrangements involved information.ca and then dot TV, which was acquired by Veracine in 2001. Media reports at the time described headline figures around $50 million across the initial term and noted that income has helped with expenses such as United Nations dues. Tuvalu has a population of slightly less than 10,000 people, and having been there, I can tell you that the country is basically a village. After Veracine's contract ended in 2021, Tuvalu selected GoDaddy as the new registry operator, with reports indicating annual government revenues of approximately $10 million. Government budgets and press coverage indicate that Dot TV royalties accounted for a huge share of national income in the late 2010s and early 2020s.

Micronesia receives slightly less on the order of around $2 to $4 million per year, mostly from radio stations and podcasts. There are a host of other countries that sell their TLDs to lesser effect. Armenia has dot AM and Djibouti has dot DJ. A interesting note is the small island territory of Tokalau. Tokalau is a territory of New Zealand with a population of approximately 15,000, 200 people. Its TLD is dot TK, which really doesn't have any meaning. In the early 2000s, Dutch entrepreneur Juse Zubir proposed using DotK for free domain registration subsidized by advertising.

Around 2001, Zubir negotiated with Tokolawan authorities to obtain the rights to operate the dot TK registry. He offered to provide free or subsidized internet connectivity and pay for licensing fees. Because Dot-TK registrations were free and globally available, the domain experienced explosive growth and numbers. By the late 2000s and 2010s, it was often reported as one of the largest country TLDs by the number of registrations. However, the free model also led to abuse. Many dot-tK domains were used for fishing and spam and other malicious behavior. Security researchers noted that dot-tK has a disproportionately high abuse rate compared to more restrictive TLDs. Revenue figures aren't known, but for three tiny, extremely difficult to reach islands in the Pacific with no resources, their top-level domain has become their greatest asset.

The Central African Republic and Equatorial Guinea have also created similar freewebskite schemes with their top-level domains. I'd like to conclude with the country that has experienced an incredible surge in its fortunes over just the last 12 months, largely due to its TLD, the Caribbean island of Anguilla. And Gwila's TLD just so happens to be dot AI. With the rise of artificial intelligence companies, there has been a corresponding increase in companies interested in acquiring a dot AI domain name. Since the launch of ChatGPT in 2023, the number of dot AI domains has exploded. There were fewer than 200,000 registered just two years ago, and given current trends, there should be about a million in 2026.

In 2022, sales of their domain name accounted for just 5% of Inguilla's government revenues. In 2025, it's estimated to be just under 50%. Most people who need a domain name tend to stick with the basic.com or dot org, depending on what it's for. However, there's a world of other top-level domain names out there that most people don't even realize are options. However, the list of TLDs is not comprehensive. For example, oddly enough, there is no top-level domain name for dot pod or dot podcast, which seems like a massive oversight to me. So if anyone out there has $185,000 burning a hole in their pocket and is willing to pony up another $25 grand every year, you too can have your own, very own, top-level domain name. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel.

The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. My big thanks go to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible. And I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord. That's where everything happens that's outside the podcast. And links to those are available in the show notes. As always, if you leave a review on any major podcast app or in the above community groups, you too can have it read in the show.