Twitch.tv. Discord.gg. Github.io. Three memorable addresses for three major websites that all have something in common: Their iconic URLs come from small island nations and territories.
The three platforms use the domain suffixes — short codes at the end of URLs — theoretically reserved for sites from Tuvalu, Guernsey, and the British Indian Ocean Territory. But the country codes also carry other meanings: TV has long stood for television, gamers use “gg” as an abbreviation for “good game,” and I/O is a common technical term. And so, these small island states are among a significant number who are selling off their memorable web addresses.
Take Anguilla, for instance. A British territory in the Caribbean, there are fewer than 20,000 people on the tiny island. It doesn’t seem like the sort of place that would benefit from the artificial intelligence wave sweeping the tech world — except Anguilla’s country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is .ai, an irresistible address for AI startups.
“I knew way back that [.ai] could end up being used for artificial intelligence, that it could be valuable someday. But it was a question of when, right?” Vincent Cate, president at DataHaven.Net Ltd, which handles sales of the .ai domain for the Anguillan government, told Rest of World. “It really, really took off November [30, 2022], when ChatGPT came out. The sales have gone up a lot since then.”
The rewards from selling web addresses are considerable: Cate estimates the revenue generated by Anguilla’s .ai domain — around $3 million per month — currently accounts for around a third of the government’s monthly budget. Following a deal with GoDaddy in 2022, some reports said Tuvalu could make $10 million per year from the .tv domain — one-sixth of its GDP. That revenue has allowed Tuvalu to pave its roads, expand electricity access for its residents, and even pay its first annual United Nations membership in 2000.
Landing the rights to .tv and .ai has proved a gold mine for Tuvalu and Anguilla — but how did they get these specific addresses to begin with?
ICANN, an American nonprofit, is tasked with the coordination and upkeep of the domain name system. But ICANN doesn’t choose which territories get domains or what their codes will be. The two-letter country codes were actually created as part of an international standard, ISO 3166-1, all the way back in 1974 — well before the modern internet was created, and therefore without any thought to the potential value of .tv or .ai. One of the original uses for ISO 3166-1 is the global postal system, which explains why the codes aren’t just assigned to sovereign nations, but also to overseas territories like Anguilla.
Theoretically, these domains were intended to be reserved for a country or territory’s own businesses to claim. Some countries do enforce this: The .no domain is still reserved for Norwegian people or organizations, while .jp requires a permanent Japanese postal address. For places like Guernsey, with a population of around 65,000 people, there isn’t a huge demand for local websites compared to countries with larger populations — but there is a global appetite for .gg addresses. Given how often “gg” is typed on its platform by gamers, Discord says that by putting it in its shared URLs, the phrase is “baked into the foundation of our company.”
Here are 10 country code domains that have a life well beyond their own borders — and why these addresses are in demand.
🇮🇴
.io
| Location | British Indian Ocean Territory, an archipelago south of India. Best known for the military base on Diego Garcia, it has no permanent residents. | Alternate meaning | “I/O” is a basic computing term meaning “input/output.” |
| Who wants it? | Tech startups and browser game developers. | Notable websites | Github.io, agar.io, itch.io |
🇦🇮
.ai
| Location | Anguilla, a British overseas territory in the Caribbean, is a 91-square-kilometer island with a population of around 16,000. | Alternate meaning | “AI” is used as an acronym for “artificial intelligence.” |
| Who wants it? | AI-based companies and projects. | Notable websites | Office.ai, jasper.ai, replika.ai |
🇬🇬
.gg
| Location | The Bailiwick of Guernsey, a British crown dependency off the coast of France that’s home to around 65,000 people. | Alternate meaning | “gg” is an abbreviation for “good game,” a commonly used expression in the gaming community. |
| Who wants it? | Gaming platforms. | Notable websites | Discord.gg, cloudbase.gg, start.gg |
🇹🇻
.tv
| Location | Tuvalu, an island nation of around 10,000 people located in the South Pacific. | Alternate meaning | “TV” is a common abbreviation for “television.” |
| Who wants it? | Video-based services. | Notable websites | Twitch.tv, MLB.tv, bilibili.tv |
🇩🇯
.dj
| Location | Djibouti, located next to Ethiopia on the Horn of Africa, is home to approximately 1 million people. | Alternate meaning | “DJ” is a common abbreviation for “disc jockey.” |
| Who wants it? | Music-related platforms. | Notable websites | Rave.dj, transitions.dj, cord.dj |
🇫🇲
.fm
| Location | The Federated States of Micronesia, an archipelago in the Western Pacific. Home to around 100,000 people. | Alternate meaning | “FM” can be used to refer to FM radio, a broadcasting method. |
| Who wants it? | Music and podcast-based services. | Notable websites | Last.fm, setlist.fm, player.fm |
🇱🇾
.ly
| Location | Libya, a country of 6.8 million people located on the coast of North Africa. | Alternate meaning | The suffix “-ly” commonly appears in English-language adverbs. |
| Who wants it? | Commonly used by URL shortening services, as well as anyone wanting a unique URL. | Notable websites | Bit.ly, visual.ly, list.ly |
🇮🇹
.it
| Location | Italy, a major European nation with a population of 59 million. | Alternate meaning | The pronoun “it” in English. |
| Who wants it? | A wide variety of users; can be adopted by anyone who wants a memorable web address. | Notable websites | Flip.it, redd.it, tip.it |
🇲🇪
.me
| Location | Montenegro in the Balkans, home to 613,000 people. | Alternate meaning | Can be used to represent “me” in English. |
| Who wants it? | Used by a broad array of websites. | Notable websites | Cash.me, fund.me, trade.me |
🇻🇨
.vc
| Location | Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, a Caribbean nation with a population of 110,500. | Alternate meaning | In English, “VC” often stands for “venture capital.” |
| Who wants it? | Venture capital firms and investor groups. | Notable websites | Foundry.vc, iqcapital.vc, butterfly.vc |
