Royalmail.com

[pne]

I went to royalmail.co.uk. It redirected me to royalmail.com.

What's up with that? I would've thought that they'd register a .uk domain! They're a UK company, for goodness' sake, aren't they?

For me, this is on a level with the fact that the US Army public-facing domain is goarmy.com and not army.mil. (Unless I've misunderstood something.)

Treating top-level domains as meaningless is somehow irking for me. (I also find it weird if German companies get a .com domain, especially local/regional ones such as Hamburger Hochbahn AG—though to their credit, they're also hochbahn.de now.)

Comments

[nik-w.livejournal.com]

I know quite a few UK companies that use .com instead of .co.uk (or, in some cases, as well as). Like the previous poster suggested, I don't think it's a country-specific TLD these days. It's an internationally-recognised thing (can't think of the exact word I'm looking for... symbol? trade mark?). I think there's a certain amount of prestige attached to it as well - if you only have .co.uk, you are seen as a smaller company than one that has .com, as they are more of an international company. If that irks you, what are your thoughts on .tv domains, being as they're not being used for the people of Tuvalu?

.tv

[pne.livejournal.com]

what are your thoughts on .tv domains, being as they're not being used for the people of Tuvalu?

My main thought is that companies are silly for paying the very high fees that the .tv NIC charges for its domains, and that they're silly for wanting such a domain.

I feel slightly different about .cc .cx .to .nu which have also, in effect, become "generic" domains, but I'd only see them as such for private people or organisations, and would consider them silly for company domains (unless they're present in the corresponding country).