Who Dominates Domains

In case you haven’t counted them all lately, slightly more than half of all Internet domains are commercial. According to SecuritySpace.com’s September 1st Survey:

  • 5,766,929 domains are .com (50.1% of all registered Internet domains).
  • 825,832 domains are .net (7.2%)
  • 640,109 domains are .org (5.6%)
  • 94,075 domains are .edu (0.8%)
  • The Germans handily beat the English when the subject is registered domains: 769,553 .de domains versus 377,745 .uk domains or 6.7% vs 3.3%. Even factoring Germany’s larger population of people (82.3 million versus 60 million), Deutschland dominates Europe. The Poles come in third, closely followed by the Russians, Japanese, and Dutch (each of those countries with between 229,000 and 226,000 domains).

    If you think that an average of one domain for every 71 Dutch means the Netherlands has a large number of domains per capital, consider the popularity of domains registered on Third World islands that have lax laws governing business and low or no taxes:

  • The number of domains registered on the Cocos Islands (43,337) or on the island republic of Niue (42,834) exceed the numbers of domains registered in Sweden or Norway.
  • The number registered in the Christmas Islands (30,234) is more than those registered in Israel and Spain combined or Ireland, Hong Kong, Singapore, and India combined.
  • Those three Pacific Ocean islands — known online as .cc, .nu, and .cx — have a combined population of 3,208 people, or an average of 36 domains per person. Christmas Island (pop. 433) has the highest per capita average, 69. However, Niue offers the benefit of free WiFi access throughout its 260 square kilometers of land (equal to about 1.5 times the size of Washington, DC).