History of .org

The history of .org, just as the history of other generic top level domain extensions, is very interesting. The .org extension was introduced in 1984. The three character code, .org, is the abbreviation of 'organization' and a domain name with this extension is regarded as ideal for non-profit organizations.

The .org is one among the original group of generic top level domains, the others being .com, .gov, .edu, .net, and .mil. In the beginning this domain extension was meant for non commercial agencies, educational establishments, government entities and network service providers. The .org is now one of the unrestricted generic top-level domains, established as a global extension in 1995. The .org registration is open to any individual, company or organization anywhere in the world. At present, it enjoys the status of the 5th largest top level domain on the Internet.

In January 2003, the Public Interest Registry (PIR) was recognized as the official registry for .org extension by ICANN (the Internet Corporations for Assigned Names and Numbers). The .org registration is managed by Affilias which provides back end technical services to PIR, and the registration service is sponsored by Public Interest Registry in co-operation with Internet Society (ISOC). The database of the .org registration service is maintained by the PIR.

Generally, the .org extension is used as the top level domain as in www.xxx.org, where .org is the top level domain. You are also allowed to register .org domain names as second level domains within the country code. In some cases, non-profit organizations use the .or domain extension instead of .org domain extension. Usually, the .org second level domains will be in the format www.xxx.org.xx or www.xxx.or.xx, where .xx is the country code top level domain.

There are more than two million .org registrations at present. For more information of the history of .org, you can access the plentiful resources on the topic at http://www.publicinterestregistry.org.