4 ms·

I can’t think of any prominent ones outside of country code domains.

by davkan 13d ago

bombcar 13d ago
You can almost guess someone's age from that alone - they're more rare, but long domain names still appear that encode a city and a state, and you could just "grab" the first part when signing up.
- davkan 13d ago
  Outside of the context of ccTLDs and city.state.gov etc, I struggle to think of examples 3LD+ domains where they are owned and operated by completely different concerns than the parent. If at some point you could just register your own mysite.state.gov domains willy nilly that's probably before my initial time online around 2000. Another poster raised the point of hosting services which is valid. But at present outside of that example and the above I really can't think of an example where you have a link to entity.com and you have any significant cause to verify the identity beyond the 2LD.
  - saimiam 13d ago
    All Indian banks use bankname.bank.in as their domain. I’m not sure who owns bank.in but this is a common suffix which is different from the .co.uk pattern.
    - marysol5 13d ago
      IDRBT Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology
  - bombcar 13d ago
    Many services today support vanity domains - Google even has special support for it: https://publicsuffix.org/list/public_suffix_list.dat https://publicsuffix.org/list/public_suffix_list.dat
    - notpushkin 13d ago
      Tangential, but why call out Google specifically? PSL is widely used: https://publicsuffix.org/learn/ https://publicsuffix.org/learn/
ketzu 13d ago
Github Pages is probably the most well known one (on here). I think geocities had this as well? A lot of hosting services offer this in general. (eg render) Tumblr? (Might not count as the control over the page is more limited. The subdomains "are" still tumblr.) For reddits subdomains are redirects to subreddits of the same name, so I guess that doesn't count.
- davkan 13d ago
  None of these examples are of actual separate registration/ownership of a 3LD from the parent 2LD. Cloudflare owns the domain for myproject.pages.dev and hosts all the relevant infra. Not to say that there isn't a different entity represented by the 3LD than the 2LD but it's not exactly the same. Also I would not consider the examples of tumblr and reddit to be relevant. A person's blog on myprofile.tumblr.org is still the tumblr organization. This would be true for reddit even if they didn't redirect. Reddit admins moderate content on all subreddits.
  - megagpt1 13d ago
    You can buy example.it.com on many registrars. Someone bought it.com and operates it like a TLD.
    - davkan 13d ago
      Interesting. I do wonder how many people outside scammers and squatters buy them. I'd rather have an .xyz or .biz address personally.
      - dotancohen 13d ago
        When someone defames at SEO-optimized large-company.it.com, then Large Company gets interested. Or, more succinctly, when money gets involved.
  - ketzu 13d ago
    I see, that's a valid way to think of domain ownership. When I read > I have been taught and tell my users to check the domain to verify a website is real. I was thinking more of control of the content as "ownership" of the domain.
strenholme 13d ago
I remember I had beach.santa-cruz.ca.us at one point registered to me. I owned beach.santa-cruz.ca.us, someone else owned santa-cruz.ca.us, yet someone else owned ca.us, and I believe Network Solutions took care of .us at the time.
- fc417fc802 13d ago
  You say "registered" to you as though this was via an official registrar but surely you mean that someone rented ca.us and decided on their own to lease out subdomains to people? (Aside, I always see "owned" and "bought" but you can only ever "lease" under the ICANN system as the present situation so clearly demonstrates.)
  - brirec 13d ago
    Historically, xx.us (where xx is a two letter state code) domains have been owned* by the named US state, which then would issue subdomains on top. I believe this was originally planned and set up by ICANN themselves. *: I realize that “owned” is a loaded word here, but (1) I’m referring to a registrar/issuer, which makes it yet more complicated as to how much “ownership” (de facto or otherwise) a given entity may have, and (2) I really don’t give a fuck about pedantic word choice if the meaning is unambiguous.
    - fc417fc802 13d ago
      My aside wasn't intended to be pedantic, rather observing the apparent inconsistency in how it appears people think about these matters versus what the present situation illustrates the reality to be. > but (1) I’m referring to a registrar/issuer, which makes it yet more complicated We're also talking about a ccTLD which makes it even more complicated. AFAIK those fall entirely under the jurisdiction of the respective UN recognized government although I don't know how strong that agreement is in practice (treaty versus something else). So at that point I guess we've roughly got ICANN -> US federal government -> CA state government -> registrar -> private party -> sublet.
      - 13d ago

I can’t think of any prominent ones outside of country code domains.

by davkan 13d ago

I can’t think of any prominent ones outside of country code domains.

You can almost guess someone's age from that alone - they're more rare, but long domain names still appear that encode a city and a state, and you could just "grab" the first part when signing up.

davkan 13d ago
Outside of the context of ccTLDs and city.state.gov etc, I struggle to think of examples 3LD+ domains where they are owned and operated by completely different concerns than the parent. If at some point you could just register your own mysite.state.gov domains willy nilly that's probably before my initial time online around 2000. Another poster raised the point of hosting services which is valid. But at present outside of that example and the above I really can't think of an example where you have a link to entity.com and you have any significant cause to verify the identity beyond the 2LD.
- saimiam 13d ago
  All Indian banks use bankname.bank.in as their domain. I’m not sure who owns bank.in but this is a common suffix which is different from the .co.uk pattern.
  - marysol5 13d ago
    IDRBT Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology
- bombcar 13d ago
  Many services today support vanity domains - Google even has special support for it: https://publicsuffix.org/list/public_suffix_list.dat https://publicsuffix.org/list/public_suffix_list.dat
  - notpushkin 13d ago
    Tangential, but why call out Google specifically? PSL is widely used: https://publicsuffix.org/learn/ https://publicsuffix.org/learn/

ketzu 13d ago

Github Pages is probably the most well known one (on here). I think geocities had this as well? A lot of hosting services offer this in general. (eg render) Tumblr? (Might not count as the control over the page is more limited. The subdomains "are" still tumblr.) For reddits subdomains are redirects to subreddits of the same name, so I guess that doesn't count.

davkan 13d ago
None of these examples are of actual separate registration/ownership of a 3LD from the parent 2LD. Cloudflare owns the domain for myproject.pages.dev and hosts all the relevant infra. Not to say that there isn't a different entity represented by the 3LD than the 2LD but it's not exactly the same. Also I would not consider the examples of tumblr and reddit to be relevant. A person's blog on myprofile.tumblr.org is still the tumblr organization. This would be true for reddit even if they didn't redirect. Reddit admins moderate content on all subreddits.
- megagpt1 13d ago
  You can buy example.it.com on many registrars. Someone bought it.com and operates it like a TLD.
  - davkan 13d ago
    Interesting. I do wonder how many people outside scammers and squatters buy them. I'd rather have an .xyz or .biz address personally.
    - dotancohen 13d ago
      When someone defames at SEO-optimized large-company.it.com, then Large Company gets interested. Or, more succinctly, when money gets involved.
- ketzu 13d ago
  I see, that's a valid way to think of domain ownership. When I read > I have been taught and tell my users to check the domain to verify a website is real. I was thinking more of control of the content as "ownership" of the domain.

strenholme 13d ago

I remember I had beach.santa-cruz.ca.us at one point registered to me. I owned beach.santa-cruz.ca.us, someone else owned santa-cruz.ca.us, yet someone else owned ca.us, and I believe Network Solutions took care of .us at the time.

fc417fc802 13d ago
You say "registered" to you as though this was via an official registrar but surely you mean that someone rented ca.us and decided on their own to lease out subdomains to people? (Aside, I always see "owned" and "bought" but you can only ever "lease" under the ICANN system as the present situation so clearly demonstrates.)
- brirec 13d ago
  Historically, xx.us (where xx is a two letter state code) domains have been owned* by the named US state, which then would issue subdomains on top. I believe this was originally planned and set up by ICANN themselves. *: I realize that “owned” is a loaded word here, but (1) I’m referring to a registrar/issuer, which makes it yet more complicated as to how much “ownership” (de facto or otherwise) a given entity may have, and (2) I really don’t give a fuck about pedantic word choice if the meaning is unambiguous.
  - fc417fc802 13d ago
    My aside wasn't intended to be pedantic, rather observing the apparent inconsistency in how it appears people think about these matters versus what the present situation illustrates the reality to be. > but (1) I’m referring to a registrar/issuer, which makes it yet more complicated We're also talking about a ccTLD which makes it even more complicated. AFAIK those fall entirely under the jurisdiction of the respective UN recognized government although I don't know how strong that agreement is in practice (treaty versus something else). So at that point I guess we've roughly got ICANN -> US federal government -> CA state government -> registrar -> private party -> sublet.
    - 13d ago