According to a tweet from .CO Registry CEO Juan Diego Calle, the Registry has launched a new website to sell .CO domain names to the Colombian market. The website can be found on Dominios.com.co.
Just launched our new site for the Colombian market: http://t.co/6OAD8L9IY7 Yey!
— Juan Diego Calle (@juandiegocalle) March 14, 2014
I was curious about why the .CO Registry would use a .com.co domain name instead of a .CO domain name, especially because Dominios.CO is a domain name that is reserved by the Registry. The reason is actually pretty smart. According to Juan, “the .com.co is more common and recognized in Colombia than .co.”
Juan cited Google as an example of this, since they use Google.com.co for its website. I noticed that Yahoo redirects its .com.co to a Yahoo.com subdomain, and ESPN does the same with ESPN.com.co.
The one thing I am surprised about is that the Registry isn’t forwarding Dominios.CO to the correct website. Perhaps they realize that nobody would type that in, so it’s not necessary, and it could also remove a valuable domain name from the aftermarket if they begin to use that as a forwarder.
People in Colombia who use this new website can purchase both .com.co and .CO domain names from the Registry.
So, they admitted have been screwing for years all the domainers who bought their .co domains?!?!? ahahahahahhh that’s incredible
Sorry, I don’t follow your logic.
@Elliot, what so hard to understand on Ivan’s comment? He is right, .CO registry is promoting their Colombian ccTLD to be global. Bullshit! Finally they start to focus on the market that they have been elected for…
I don’t understand why this news means they screwed anyone.
They screwed domainers for years and they still keep doing that. If ICANN and IANA work as they supposed to, they would not allow ccTLD registries to promote their ccTLDs as global. Concept of ccTLD is/was not global, but local, for the particular country. We know that. Even you may like .CO to be a global, it is not supposed to be.
In Colombia .COM.CO & .COM are far more recognized than .CO because hardly anyone uses .CO.
In April/May 2012 my wife and I visited Cartagena, Colombia. I saw much heavier usage of .COM domains than I had expected though certainly lots of .COM.CO as well. I did not see any .CO until I was on the flight back to Miami and was browsing a magazine on the plane – one ad only. Actually, even in a city in the interior of the country there was still quite a bit of .COM and cheap internet cafes so I was still connected to the US. My niece who is about 12 is a heavy Facebook user.
Admittedly with enough marketing .CO could become an alternative TLD sort of like .Net in the US – when a small business sees the .COM unavailable or priced unreasonably high, sometimes they will go with a .Net for reg fee.
Ivan&Mike
“They screwed domainers for years and they still keep doing that. ”
Nobody held a gun to your head and make you buy any co’s
I bought in to .co and i don’t feel screwed. Is a matter of fact i feel that is one of my best decision .
@Jojo – I have no knowledge of any meaning of “screwed” that would involve “gun to your head”…
But you should read http://www.iana.org/reports/2009/co-report-24nov2009.html to learn about the issue Ivan & I were pointing to…
Many other countries have been using the .COM.CC TLD since CC’s were first launched, this is nothing new.
Get yourself a passport and experience the world, it will do you more good than learning what TLD’s they use.
I consider myself very fortunate to have been able to travel quite a bit in the last few years. Most of those places don’t use .com.whatever. I’ve been to .fr, .hr, .it, .cr, .bs, .nl, .ca, .be, .co.uk, and .pa,
I agree with you @Elliot. I have been in 52 countries and I know just few places where .COM.XX have been used. Mostly Latin and Center America. But even there, some of such countries are switching to non-COM extension, such as Dominican Republic, supporting now not just .COM.DO, but .DO as well. And that trend seems to make sense and support. When this week Forbes announced Dominican version of its magazine to be available in market late this spring, I checked domain registrations and found out that FORBES.DO has been registered, leaving FORBES.COM.DO unregistered. I believe .COM part of .COM.XX is going to fade out soon or later.
I was in Costa Rica last month and most domain names I noticed were .com but there were also some .CR. I was in Panama about 6 months ago and it was pretty much the same with .com and .PA.
Right, but 10 years back you would not see any non-COM domains in those countries. So right now it may be even, but trend is clear…
You need to visit the Orient my friend, here’s a handful a countries I’ve been to that do use it;
.com.ph Philippines
.com.sg Singapore
.com.my Malaysia
.com.tw Taiwan
.com.vn Vietnam
There are a few places in that region that are on my list, but it’s tough to do these days with a 2 year old.
Understandable, We took our 2 little ones to the PI, my daughter was under two and they were a handful, fortunately my parents watched them as we traveled to other countries, but I worried about them all that time and it took some of the fun out of it.. Yeah they got to fly for almost free but it wasn’t worth it, better to wait when their older so then can experience it and remember it forever.
Anyway, I always found it interesting they were using the .com.cc and the .cc, this seemed to depend on the kind of business it was.. I dabbled in it, registering only 2 but the revenue I was earning was lower than the reg fees, so I dropped them.. No regrets.
@Elliot – In Costa Rica only trademark holders may register .CR domain names, rest may register .COM.CR, I believe.
Correction: Costa Rica has .CO.CR, not .COM.CR
I was only saying that it seems to me they “created” a TLD starting from zero, a new TLD that had no real use at that time.
I have less than a dozen of .co in my portfolio, so it’s not my problem, anyway I registered them for both the meaningss they “can have”: the meaning of “company” and even the meaning of “Colombian nationality”, since I registered few of them even because I wanted few particular domains expressing a Colombian provenience.
But now I have just learned what? They “created” and sold a TLD that had no real use, not like Company nor like Colombian. Real few chance of success in this case…
What I say is only this: they made an impressive amount of advertising, we all remember it. I am just saying I would have appreciated too much knowing from them that .co WAS ACTUALLY A COMPLETELY NEW TLD, not in use at all, not even in Colombia (although released by the National Colombian Registry…).
Simply, I would not have given my confidence to this “new gTLD”, with those premises.
I’ve said many times I don’t invest in .CO domain names.
However, do a search for Elliot Silver and let me know where my Elliot.CO website ranks.
I have a couple of .cr because I couldn’t get the short good keywords elsewhere,you can register them,though Marcaria.Raider,you forgot Thailand .co.th totally untapped market,and years behind many countries.
Oh.I forgot.I believe I read somewhere not long ago,that Google now counts .co .asia .eu and .ru as TLD’s now.
What I see is that .com no longer means ‘US commerce’, but simply ‘global’
Why suppose .COM to mean “US Commerce”..? It is gTLD – global; and it means “Commerce”, or just simply “Business”. And business can be also personal…
Hey Elliot… Just a quick clarification to Juan’s tweet… http://dominios.com.co is simply an updated version of our Colombian retail site. It has been in place for a few years now (since 2010, just like our Global retail site: http://go.co). The reason we use .com.co instead of .co in Colombia is because .com.co is and has been the domain extension that signals Colombian business and interests since the start of the Internet. .CO, as a standalone string, was launched for the first time in 2010 expressly to signify global interests. I hope this clarifies any confusion. Cheers, Lori Anne
Thanks for the clarification… sorry for the confusion.