Christopher Hofman Laursen, Managing Partner at European Domain Centre, shared this infographic below which shows a timeline of all available domain name extensions. This month marks the 30th anniversary of .com (March 15th to be exact), and you can see the domain endings that followed .com on this illustrated timeline.
There are now over 800 domain name extensions to register, and according to the European Domain Centre blog, there have been over 284 million domain names registered since the first registration in 1985.
In the infographic that I shared with you below, you can see the ccTLDs identified by the national flag background, and the gTLDs, including the new gTLD domain names, have a yellow background.
Here’s an interactive version of this infographic: http://blog.europeandomaincentre.com/do-you-know-all-domain-endings/
I never realized that .US and .UK came out so long ago. If I was in the UK and had the choice between a .UK and a .CO.UK I would definitely choose the shorter option. Curious as to why the shorter version wasn’t as popular. Same thing with .AU compared to .COM.AU
Hi Todd,
it’s the root domain (according to IANA’s list) which is listed in the infographic. co.uk came out in 1985 and .uk not only before 2015. For Australia you have com.au, net.au and org.au. .Au doesn’t exist.
Todd – because domains in the second level weren’t available at the time. .uk only recently opened up to second level registrations. Similarly .us domain names weren’t available at the second level until much later, I want to say after 2002 or so, but possibly as late as 2004.
Thanks for the explanation Christopher and Kellie.