Nominet, the UK registrar, published the results of a poll that found:
More than three-quarters (77%) of British consumers prefer to use a .uk rather than a .com when searching for information on the Internet.
Clearly, you have to hold these numbers at arm’s length. But I would agree in general that people have an affinity for their country codes. And any company that is planning to localize for the UK would be wise to use .uk.
So who’s applied for IDNs so far?
According to ICANN, 10 applications (representing five languages) were submitted over the first four days.
ICANN won’t announce exactly who applied and for what until each application is successful — which pushes us well into 2010.
So I’ve had to turn to press reports from the registries to piece together the data.
Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:
Unless a country made more than one application (which I don’t believe is allowed under fast track protocol) I’m still missing three countries. I’m guessing there could be one or more additional Middle East countries. And perhaps Taiwan.
What do you think? What countries/languages am I missing?
I’m pleased to announce a new country codes map, this one devoted to the 27 members of the European Union.
The ccTLDs are sized according to population and to the side is a list of the top 17 ccTLDs by number of registrations.
Germany leads the list of course. I also included .EU, which now has more than 3 million registrations.
Since there are fewer countries to include, this map is smaller than the Country Codes of the World map.
We printed a small quantity because we’re not sure how many folks would want one, but if you, shipping is free for the next month.
Last week I wrote about the coming of IDNs (internationalized domain names).
But IDNs aren’t the only new country codes to keep your eyes on.
There is also the occasional new Latin-based ccTLD.
Like .IC.
The Canary Islands is looking to get a country code to raise its visibility.
That, and also to bring in a few million dollars in registration fees. Just imagine all the Bay Area startups that would relish a funky new combo-ccTLD name.
Plast.ic.
Elast.ic.
Bombast.ic.
Am I sounding a bit sarcast.ic?
Of course, the gap between asking for a ccTLD and actually getting one can be quite significant. First you have to be included in the ISO 3166-1 list of country codes.
According to Wikipedia, here’s how you do it:
Currently 246 countries, territories, or areas of geographical interest are assigned official codes in ISO 3166-1. According to the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency (ISO 3166/MA), the only way to enter a new country name into ISO 3166-1 is to have it registered in one of the following two sources:[6]
- United Nations Terminology Bulletin Country Names, or
- Country and Region Codes for Statistical Use of the UN Statistics Division.
To be listed in the bulletin Country Names, a country must either be:
- A member country of the United Nations,
- A member of one of its specialized agencies, or
- A party to the Statute of the International Court of Justice.
The list of names in Country and Region Codes for Statistical Use of the UN Statistics Division is based on the bulletin Country Names and other UN sources.
Once a country name or territory name appears in either of these two sources, it will be added to ISO 3166-1 by default.
That last I checked, Canary Islands is not on either of these two lists.
That said, I have a feeling that the Canary Islands will get its wish, although it might take some time. The IC acronym has already been reserved on its behalf and the Islands would not be the first autonymous territory to get its own ccTLD. The rest is just lawyers, lobbying, etc.
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