What is a domain extension today?

In the early days of the internet, domain extensions had meaning. .com for commercial, .org for organizations, .gov for goverment, .net for networks and so on. The internet now has over 1500 domain extensions (source: iana.org), and there are now hardly any rules for extensions. My website is kyleplo.com, and it is not commercial.

Extension Trends

.com

.com is the most popular by far. In fact, most browser have a keyboard shortcut to add .com to the address bar. It is over used, and most people (including me) just use it because it is cheap.

.io

.io is used for many popular multiplayer games for some reason. But my Github pages site, kyleplo.github.io is NOT AN IO GAME in case you were wondering, so if you are in my class at school STOP LAUGHING AT ME ABOUT THIS. IT IS JUST A TREND!

Monitered Extensions

.org, .ong and .ngo

These three are reserved for organizations and you must prove you are an organization before buying one. (.ngo stands for non-government organization so you must prove that too for .ngo.)

.edu

.edu is reserved for education and you must prove it before buying. (But oddly, .education is not.)

.gov

.gov is reserved for government.

Some countries

Many countries require evidence that you live there before buying a domain with their extension (such as .us and .ca). However, poorer countries sell rights without evidence to make money (such as .tv and .io).