Domain Names: .Org as a Domain Name

Many people think that in order to register a domain name as a .org, the organization hosting the domain must be a nonprofit. Though logical as this may seem, the .org domain extension, which is short for the word "organization," is an unrestricted, generic, top-level domain. This means that any person, company or organization can use .org as a domain extension.
 
 
Generic Domain Extensions
A domain extension is considered to be generic when it isn't affiliated with any country.
 
The .org domain extension was first introduced in 1984. It is one of the original generic, top-level domains. Originally, .org was meant to be used only by non-commercial agencies.
 
In 1995, .org became a global extension and is today the third most common domain extension used on the Internet. Currently, there are more than 2 million .org registrations.
 
In addition to .org, the following are also generic, top-level domain extensions:
  • .com, intended to be used by for-profit companies
  • .edu, intended to be used by educational institutions
  • .gov, intended to be used by government entities
  • .mil, intended to be used by a military branch or organization
  • .net, intended to be used by a network service provider.
Due to the fact that both nonprofit organizations and for-profit companies can use the .org domain extension, people can easily become confused when they conduct a domain search. For instance, someone who is at a .org Web site might mistakenly believe that they are dealing with a nonprofit organization when they are, in fact, dealing with a commercial entity.
 
This confusion has pushed many people to call for restrictions on the .org domain extension. In general, these people want only nonprofit organizations to be able to use the .org extension.
 
As .org is currently unrestricted, however, anyone can register a cheap .org domain. In fact, a lot of people will register both the .org and the .com versions of their Web sites.
 
In this section, we'll discuss the history of the .org domain extension. We'll provide information on why this domain extension was originally created and will also touch on the debate that currently surrounds the use of the .org domain extension.

The History of .Org

Established in 1984, the .org domain extension was viewed as the ideal extension for nonprofit organizations. Over time, however, others saw the potential of .org sites and began using them, whether or not the organization hosting the site was nonprofit. Currently, anyone can use the .org domain extension.
 
In general, the .org domain extension is used as follows: www.xxx.org, where .org is the top-level domain. However, a person can also register .org domain names as second-level domains within the country code (e.g., www.xxx.org.xx, where .xx is the country code and also the top-level domain).
 
Currently, there is debate as to whether the .org extension should be used only by nonprofit organizations. The history of .org domain extensions will help shape their future.
 
Resources
NameMedia Inc. (2007). History of .org. Retrieved December 10, 2007, from the BuyDomains.com Web site: http://www.buydomains.com/domain-resources/
domain-extensions/history-of-org.jsp.