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.io TLD going away? (fedia.io)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I just saw this: https://every.to/p/the-disappearance-of-an-internet-domain

I have no idea if it's real, but if it is, that will be most unfortunate

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

It's real in the sense that the established policy is to retire ccTLDs within five years of a country code ceasing to exist. But there are multiple provisos there:

we don't know with any certainty that the IO country code will be disestablished; it doesn't necessarily follow that Mauritius regaining control of the British Indian Ocean Territory will mean the end of the IO country code (and associated .io ccTLD), for a variety of historical and administrative reasons
we don't know with any certainty that IANA will unequivocally shut down the domain, vs. converting it to a generic top level domain like many other existing special-interest and novelty gTLDs (e.g. .cloud, .gay, .info, .tech)

Obviously it's worth keeping an eye on what IANA does with this situation, but personally I suspect one or the other of the above will happen. It's probably in the interests of Mauritius to retain the domain as a source of income, but if they don't then somebody else will likely want to take ownership, and there's plenty of moneyed interests in retaining .io since a number of large business customers (the largest likely being Alphabet/Google) are already using it.