I got an email today from Network Solutions declaring "Is the .COM Domain You Want Taken? Get the .US.COM & Save" and thought to myself, "wow, they are finally starting to advertise the .us TLD!" Here in the States we sort of take the .com and .org top level domains for granted. But in much of the rest of the world websites use their country code TLD... so, in the United Kingdom you will see lots of .uk domains. Personally, I prefer this, as it helps identify the site's situs (to use a legal term)... don't believe the hype of pure virtual existence, websites have tangible form in the physical world.
Trouble with this advertisement from Network Solutions is that they are not, in fact, advertising a .us TLD... they are advertising subdomains of the .us.com domain. Note the .com is at the end, not preceding the .us like with .com.au (I just set one of these up yesterday, nothing special about Australia). So, what we've got going here is somebody (presumably Network Solutions or a subsidiary) spent the $20 necessary to register us.com--a process that is no different than when I registered prbonogeek.org--and is now going to sell subdomains of their domain for $20 per year and are passing it off as a ".COM Alternative!"
Now, I can't speak for anyone else, but the idea of giving $20 to some dude who happened to buy the us.com domain when I could just as easily purchase a .us domain for the same price through a legitimate registrar, seems awfully silly. To further bolster my claim, have a look at the actual us.com site... looks like a google link farm to me. Having said that, if anyone wants to purchase subdomains for probonogeek.org, I'm offering them at the competitive price of only $15/y!
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