Another day, another abused country code

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Everyone has a hobby and I suppose one of mine is looking for web sites that use (or abuse) country codes (ccTLDs).

I was recently pointed to a new web app called It’s Almo.st.

If you’re into countdown clocks, this web site certainly does the trick.

As for me, I was interested to see the use of the .ST country code, which is the country code for São Tomé and Príncipe. (Do you see it in the image above?)

Clearly, this web site has nothing to do with the island nation off the coast of Africa. The writer in me enjoys seeing how start-ups make creative use of country codes to round out their brand names. But the ccTLD geek in me winces when I see ccTLDs used like Scrabble tiles.

Here’s my current list of companies that have used ccTLDs in non-standard ways. I’ve so far documented the use of 28 ccTLDs across 50 web sites.

If you come across any more, send them my way…

 

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John Yunker

John Yunker

John is co-founder of Byte Level Research and author of Think Outside the Country as well as 19 editions of The Web Globalization Report Card.
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