Is Popular tech domain .io going away?
Many common TLDs are actually country domains
The first internet domain that were popularized were the standard .com domains, which was short for commercial, in contrast to .org and .gov, which were restricted to those organizational types. Since the early days, an explosion of websites and their domain name addres ushered in many more top level domains (TLDs) over time. ICANN is the top authority for domains, they delegate control to the various countries to administer through their own board, such as CIRA in Canada.
Some countries, such as Canada and Australia, have residency or presence requirements to be able to register a dot ca or dot com dot au domain. However, many countries do not, and use them as a revenue source, many are used for no other reason than they sound interesting, and have better availability of name choices than the better-known top level domains.
For example:
.ai Anguilla (UK) 1995
.co Columbia 1991
.fi Finland 1986
.fm Federated States of Micronesia 1995
.in India 1989
.io British Indian Ocean Territory (UK) 1997
.sh Saint Helena, Ascension, and Tristan de Cunha (UK) 1997
.tv Tuvalu 1996
Notice anything about this list? A few of them are UK territories, and as it turns out, one of those territories is going away, and hence the very popular .io domain is likely to also be going away.
Why is the .io TLD going away?
As you can see above, .io was the top level domain for British Indian Ocean Territory, and, well, they handed it over control of it to nearby Mauritius.
Otherwise known as the Chagos Islands, they’re located what can only be described as out in the middle of the ocean, between Tanzania and Indonesia (places that are not close together). It has strategic importance, The BBC mention that it has a US military base there, which would explain why it’s not visible on Google Maps.
What is .io used for?
The domain itself confers no special powers over any other TLD specifically, but any tech companies use the .io extension because it sounds cool? (I guess, I mean, it kinda does.) You’ll find github.io (an online software development platform, owned by Microsoft), itch.io (an independent game platform), and codepen.io (a javascript and css sharing and coding platform).
When will the dot io domain go away?
They’ve yet to formalize a treaty, and it’s too early to tell, but according to IANA’s own rules, we could be saying goodbye to .io domains in 5 years time (2029) when it is scheduled for retirement / removal, or perhaps it can be extended to 10 years (2034). The country’s ISO code will be discontinued, but it’s a significant source of revenue, especially for a small nation. If it instead became a (global) gTLD instead of a (country) cTLD, it would need to have three digits. It will be interesting to see how it turns out but if you’re considering a new venture, this is some tech debt to think about.