x.com is Twitter, but what are [a-z].com?
An exploration into the internet's most simple domain names
Being bored on a train ride, I typed into the browser of my phone: a.com ⏎. Elon started using x.com for Twitter in July this year, and I was wondering who was behind other domains such as a.com, b.com, etc. Sadly, a.com turned up blank:
And so did b.com, c.com, d.com, e.com, f.com, g.com, h.com, i.com, j.com, k.com, l.com, m.com, n.com, o.com, p.com, r.com, s.com, t.com, u.com, v.com, w.com and y.com. All blank.
If you are good at pattern recognition, you might have noticed that three domains are missing from the list above! x.com, and two others:
q.com
q.com is the first domain that actually works, and it's owned by Quantum Fiber, selling fiber internet connections in the US.
z.com
z.com currently has no clear purpose. According to the message on the page, the domain has recently changed hands as part of an acquisition by Max Bullions Limited (Hong Kong based) for 1.7M HKD (220k USD).
This seems weird as the domain was sold in 2014 for 6.8M USD, which would be around 8.9M USD today taking inflation into account.
Why is there no [a-z] \ [qxy].com?
Shortly after establishing “.com”, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority withdrew the possibility to purchase single letter domains. Existing domains such as x.com were allowed to stay. I couldn’t find the motivation behind this, but I’m guessing to prevent something like domain squatting?
For example, you could make googl.e.com as a subdomain of e.com. A non-careful user could mistake that easily for google.com.
However, other top level domains were less strict about this. Wikipedia has an extensive list of existing single letter domain names. Let’s quickly run through .org, .net and .co, and look at what’s behind these domains their [a-z].
Exploring [a-z].org
.org is a busy domain, so a quick summary to kick it off:
Grey does not resolve, blue = for sale, green = active, red = active but broken. Here’s a screenshot of every active domain:
a.org shows a log in prompt! A recent discussion on /r/hacking does not reveal the password however…
c.org redirects to change.org. Neat.
e.org is a British energy supplier. The logo frighteningly resembles that of Enron Corporation, which also dealt in energy.
It’s hard to pinpoint the purpose of f.org. The terms of service and privacy policy made me chuckle though.
g.org definitely has the most intriguing visual. Seems to be the same owners as f.org (similar website structure & terms). There’s a login form on the top right.
i.org is owned by Meta, but seems to be broken.
q.org is a web3 company.
u.org is owned by Understood, an NGO that supports “people with learning and thinking differences, like dyslexia and ADHD” - see their mission statement.
v.org is owned by The V Foundation, it has “one goal in mind: to achieve Victory Over Cancer®.” No clue what the ® is doing there, but I hate cancer too.
WordPress has w.org!
I can’t believe I had to go all the way down to x.org to find a piece of software history. Apparently the organisation almost lost this icon domain in 2016, but since they still have it, I assume that has been resolved by now.
y.org is owned by YMCA (here’s the YouTube link to the song if you feel like dancing).
What about [a-z].co?
.co also has a lot going on:
Two active ones are used as link shorteners: t.co (Twitter) and g.co (Google). The remaining active domains (green) are owned by companies: a.co (Amazon), b.co (BESTSELLER), h.co (BESTSELLER), m.co (Volvo), o.co (Beyond) and s.co (Snapchat).
This is the broken domain:
y.co is owned by a Monaco based yacht chartering company. Their twitter (nitter) has more content than the sad landing page above.
And [a-z].net?
Only two domains resolve for this TLD. i.net is for sale, but q.net is cool:
I’m clearly too young to know Desmond Llewelyn show on q.net, but he is an actor that played “Q” in the James Bond franchise.
I am a little bit disappointed
Honestly I expected a lot more from these domains. My gut feeling is that they are super valuable, and I expected all of them to be either in the hands of
some ancient software/internet organisation, like x.org
leading brands today, like x.com
jokes that got out of hand or funky stuff, like q.net
In practice, 13 out of 22 existing domains on .co are for sale. Others like y.co and i.org exist, but give an error upon loading. I think that’s a waste.
On the bright side, if you want to get your hands on a [a-z].co, there’s plenty of availability! But if you end up buying one, please do something cool with it.
P.S. If you quickly want to check [a-z] of a different domain, such as `.de` if you live in Germany, you can use this tiny python script.
P.S.2 About numbers: 1.co and 1.org exist, but 1.com and 1.net don’t.
z.com provide webhosting in Việt Nam :/