Stephen J Burke

There has always been a certain amount of distinction about using a .com address over any other domain name on the internet. Although companies anywhere in the world can register .com domains, it has been historically challenging for other countries to have easy access to the United States based registrars in order to do so. As a result, companies around the world, perhaps not with the US based operations, have setup and established their domain based on country code registration instead.

There is no reason that a company with offices around the world should not or could not utilize a single top level domain to route email for the entire company. After all, that is what the .com domain was intended for. I used to think that it was ridiculous that a company I worked for didn’t have a single domain, and always considered it the best path to have one setup.
While we were busy establishing country code specific domain names, and scrambling to setup our offices around the world, something happened. It turns out that we weren’t the only ones in this predicament. It turns out that our friends down the road were doing the same thing. As we were setting up our shop in Spain with a .es address, so were our friends in other companies in Spain.

I didn’t notice it much until I went on our honeymoon last year. We went through England, Scotland and Ireland, and it was the first time I was hard pressed to find a .com address on anything. While I blamed the fact that it was difficult for the smaller local shops to get a .com address, I saw something else happen. The country code based top level domain became a source of pride among those who had it. Talking with people on our honeymoon, it was clear that this pride resounds stronger in certain regions. Camaraderie has brought a strong brand loyalty to the use of that domain with a local country code. Stop somebody in Ireland and ask them whom they would rather do business with, and it is pretty clear where their loyalty lies. Watch how many people in Scotland will embrace a .sco domain, which has been in development for years. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7475986.stm

Is there a good time to revert everybody back to a .com address if your company already has a multitude of country code based addresses? More importantly should you? I think the day of pushing everybody into one address is gone. Enable your local users to be able to use the .com address, but let them decide if it should be their primary published address. Use technology to empower your local offices to lean onto these resources, but allow them to establish that local brand loyalty they may need to conduct their business.