Uh-oh, goodbye `.io`?

If you haven’t heard by now, the .io ccTLD is at risk of removal due to a British Treaty that was signed on October 3, 2024. In short, the Chagos Islands (ccTLD: .io) in the Indian Ocean have been given to Mauritius (ccTLD: .mu); learn more by reading The Disappearance of an Internet Domain. Of course, the Internet is buzzing because, according to policy, that would mean .io has to be removed from the TLD registry. Some people, however, are skeptical and say that too many websites use .io and would be able to “save” it by throwing money at the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.

Personally, I wouldn’t bet money either way. On one hand, standards exist for a reason and shouldn’t be abandoned because companies ignore the risk. Conversely, there seems to be a lack of education and enforcement of the standards. For example, Sri Lanka has three ccTLDs (albeit in different alphabets), The Soviet Union’s ccTLD, .su, still exists despite being dissolved in 1991, and GoDaddy promotes ccTLDs like .co without ever mentioning that it’s supposed to represent Colombia. In fact, when talking about the .io domain, GoDaddy states the following:

The .io domain extension is mainly used as an abbreviation for Input/Output, which makes it very popular for tech startups in general. The .io TLD also represents the country code for the British Indian Ocean Territory.

Note how the country representation is implied as secondary to “Input/Output.” Without proper education from the registrars, it’s no wonder many companies are caught flat-footed by this news.

That being said, I think this serves as a great case study for why following standards will always be the best bet. For those wondering, that means anything with two characters represents a country, which should only exist as long as the country exists, and anything with three or more characters is generic, which should theoretically last “forever.”

0
Subscribe to my newsletter

Read articles from Christian Hain (He/Him) directly inside your inbox. Subscribe to the newsletter, and don't miss out.

Written by

Christian Hain (He/Him)
Christian Hain (He/Him)

Internet power-user, creator, and Certified Scrum Developer® engineer. Specializing in browser-based experiences, my goal is to share what I know about making beautiful UI and frictionless UX accessible to everyone.