What Is the Future of the .io Domain?
The .io domain was originally created for the British Indian Ocean Territory but eventually became popular with the tech sector, for obvious reasons.
Part of the reason for this is that ‘io’ is similar in appearance to I/O (aka input/output), which is why the tech sector started gobbling up the .io domains. There were issues soon after the creation of the domain that had to do with the distribution of profit. A lot of app developers use the .io domain. The New Stack uses the .io domain.
It’s everywhere.
But there’s a problem, and it’s one that could have a cascading effect within the realm of the tech sector.
What has happened is that the British government announced plans to cede control of the Chagos Islands, which is a territory in the British Indian Ocean that the British government has controlled since 1814. Should that happen, the British Indian Ocean Territory could wind up no longer existing, and the two-letter country code, IO, would cease to exist.
You can see where that’s going.
Essentially, if the two-letter country code, IO, no longer exists, then there’s no need for the .io domain. And because so many in the tech sector use such domains (because of the significance of I/O), it’s hard to say whether they’ll have the domain available to use going forward. Here’s the kicker. Way back in 2008 (when climate change was still called global warming), an article was published on the Domain Name Wire site with the headline Global Warming May Be Hazardous to Your Domain Names.
In that article, the author quoted Kim Davies, vice president for Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) services and president of Public Technical Identifiers at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), who said, “The simple answer is if a country ceases to exist, under existing policy the domain will need to be retired. ICANN will permit a reasonable transition period so the affected parties can transition to other domains. In the most recent case, .YU (replaced with .RS and .ME), there was a three-year transition period assigned by the ICANN board.”
Read that again: If a country ceases to exist, the domain will need to be retired.
Retired.
What this means is that if Chagos ceases to exist, the .io domain (according to the rules and regulations) will also cease to exist.
Domains are repurposed all the time. For example, the same article mentions the .ME domain, the country code for Montenegro, which was formerly part of Yugoslavia. The country code for Yugoslavia is .yu which was phased out. The .me domain is also used for personal websites.
Could ICANN Really Shut Down the .io Domain?
The short answer is “yes.” ICANN could follow the current policy and retire the .io domain. Will it though? That’s the big question.
Andrew Allemann wrote for Domain Name Wire that it’s highly unlikely that .io registrants will lose their domains. Why does Allemann say this? One quote that’s of particular interest is this: “ICANN’s goal is the security and stability of the domain name system. What impact does yanking a popular top-level domain, used by small and large companies alike, have on the domain name system? It would be counter to ICANN’s mission.”
One of the reasons he believes this will not happen centers around Identity Digital, which is the company that runs the .io namespace. Identity Digital acquired the .io namespace when it purchased Afilias (the .io domain most likely being the primary reason for the purchase).
One reason I believe this issue isn’t going to bring an end to the .io domain is…
AI.
That’s right, AI. I’m not talking about artificial intelligence as much as I’m referring to the domain most AI companies use… .ai. There are over 500,000 .ai domains registered at the moment, and do you really think that ICANN is willing to intentionally throw the internet into such chaos? No way.
However, the .ai domain is actually the ccTLD (Country Code Top Level Domain) for Anguilla. So, if Anguilla should cease to exist, ICANN could fold up the .ai domain, and those 500,000+ sites would have to look for a new home.
Again, I just don’t see that happening.
Instead, what I believe will happen is more of a policy shift.
It’s one thing if a country ceases to exist that has a ccTLD that few use. But even tiny countries (such as Tuvalu, with a ccTLD of TV — aka the .tv domain) could cease to exist, and if ICAN were to retire the domain, things could get ugly.
I believe the solution is simple. If a country ceases to exist and the ccTLD is used by a large number of organizations, then the domain should no longer be considered a ccTLD and more a traditional domain.
That, of course, is me trying to grab at straws and predict an unknowable future. The real solution would probably be for ICANN to lock down ccTLDs for country use only. That way, if a country were to no longer exist, the loss of the domain wouldn’t be a problem.
But for the current situation, with the idea of the .io domain possibly going away, there are a lot of companies that should be considering finding a secondary domain, setting up a redirect from the new domain that points to the current site. That way, should the .io domain go bye-bye, those organizations would only have to transition their sites from the original domain to the new one. The big issue with that is losing Google rankings in the process. But if the .io domain were to go away (and I’m not saying that it will), it would behoove those organizations to have a backup plan.
Again, I cannot see ICANN scrapping the .io domain, simply because there are so many organizations using it. So, for those who do use an .io domain, I wouldn’t get too concerned, but I wouldn’t ignore the issue either because you never know.
