To two domain, or not to two domain
As you may have guessed, the United Kingdom has the top level domain of .uk. But we also have the top level domain for Great Britain - which is .gb!
It is staggeringly unlikely that you would ever have encountered a .gb domain in the wild. The only domain which is registered, though inactive, is hmg.gb - standing for His Majesty's Government. The domain was originally created in the mid 1980s, and abandoned at some point in the 1990s. There are no active domains which use .gb and today, the government only uses .gov.uk for its domains.
The Securing Government Services team at CDDO are currently in the middle of a housekeeping exercise to clean up and remove legacy services. As part of that, we are considering whether we should remove the .gb top level domain from the internet. And, we'd like your opinion on whether or not we should do that.
Administratively, it is quite simple. The .gb top level domain is delegated to the government from an organisation called ICANN - the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. We would simply need to tell them that .gb is no longer needed, and it can thus be removed from the Internet.
To domain
One of the Cabinet Office's key responsibilities is supporting collective government. As such, we have no desire to set up a separate set of domains solely for Great Britain rather than the United Kingdom.
Rationalising the estate of top level domains we have to monitor and protect will free up resources in our team. As we begin the process of moving to a new domain registry for .gov.uk it makes sense to remove any obsolete top level domains, so we don't have to pay to administer them.
There is no cost to us to hand the domain back. In fact, removing it might save us a small amount of money because we will have one less resource to monitor for security issues.
To not domain
There is a risk that if handed back another country might try to claim it for themselves. We judge this risk to be extremely low. Great Britain is assigned the .gb domain because of the policies in ISO 3166. The UK could then officially object to another country using .gb if we were concerned.
However, even if that unlikely event did occur - almost no-one would mistake a .gb domain for a .uk domain, because .gb has, as outlined, been obsolete for over thirty years.
That is the question
So, it is our intention to inform ICANN early in 2023 that the UK wishes to retire .gb. We expect this to be a straightforward administrative procedure.
We are contacting organisations which we think might be interested in this proposal and will assess their responses.
If you have any comments or questions about this proposal, please leave a comment on this blog post.
55 comments
Comment by Fili posted on
Retire .gb, with the new gTLDs it is unlikely any other country or organization will claim it.
Comment by Jon Ribbens posted on
They couldn't claim it, it's the ISO-3166 code for the UK. (I think because Ukraine also wanted UK so nobody got it, but don't quote me on that.) Unless Scotland and Northern Ireland leave the UK of course, in which case neither "UK" nor "GB" will be appropriate and we might end up with everyone in England having to move their domains to .EN or something...
Comment by marc wilson posted on
Scotland may leave the UK, but in the absence of some astonishing progress in geoengineering, cannot leave GB.
Comment by David Prior posted on
I'd say that "Great Britain" is both a political entity and a geographic one.
It would be possible to leave the former, even though it's not possible to leave the latter.
Similarly, as things stand there are islands which are part of the former but not the latter.
Comment by William Poel posted on
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. It seems like a valuable resource with negligible maintenance cost.
I have proposed a strategic use for .gb to one of the several recent erstwhile Culture Secretaries, but that discussion was lost in the shuffles.
Email me and I will send you the proposition.
Comment by Dan Brickley posted on
There may also be costs associated with losing control of it.
Plus it could look like, or be spun as, pre-judging the outcome of political processes (“We will never need .GB because NI will forever be part of the UK. And to prove it, we are throwing it away on behalf of all future occupants of these rainy Isles”.)
Comment by Jim McNeill posted on
Absolutely. The .gb tld should be opened up to businesses and people who are proud to be British, but do not claim that identity to cover any part of Ireland.
Comment by Mike Meredith posted on
Blimey that's a blast from the past. It also used to be used for some X.400-based email stuff - someone from JANET might remember. Might have been tied in with UK.AC.MHS-RELAY? As I recall, there was a certain amount of pressure in favour of X.400 email in the mid-1990s.
I'd lean in favour of hanging on to it - if you "own" a thing you have better control over it.
Comment by Mark Tomkins posted on
Thanks, Terence. Been working in this space for 30 years and admit I never knew it existed. It's simple - it should be retired. It's 100% obsolete and such a low risk of reuse and misuse. The only other country that I can think of is Gabon but they have .ga and unlikely to change. And ICANN would consult CDDO if there was ever a request for use. Means there's a bit more resource to manage the .gov.uk framework to help wider parish & town council domain adoption for improved Tier 1 government security and message authenticity.
Comment by greg posted on
Is there a low cost option to park the domain, so it can't be reused?
Comment by Harry posted on
Clarification: GB is the ISO 3166-1 code for the United Kingdom, and not for Great Britain. UK doesn't denote any country (though it's 'reserved').
That's why the UK's Olympic team is 'Team GB', and until very recently the international code for UK number plates (including in Northern Ireland) was GB.
I don't think this changes your conclusion though – there's no need to hold on to .gb.
Comment by Terence Eden posted on
Thanks for the clarification Harry. The terminology is easily confused and it is good to be precise about such matters.
Comment by Wayne posted on
If since mid 80’s there’s only ever been one user, and most people assume (correctly) it’s .uk rather than .gb inform icann and retire the tld.
Comment by Jon Ribbens posted on
dra.hmg.gb, dfhnet.dra.hmg.gb, delos.dra.hmg.gb, and hermes.dra.hmg.gb are all "active" in the sense of having published DNS records, and I assume DRA I mean DERA I mean RDERA I mean DSTL are not the sort of people you want to annoy if it turns out they're still using them 🙂
Comment by Terence Eden posted on
Thanks Jon. We've chatted with DSTL and - after some digging - they've confirmed that they aren't using those domains.
Comment by Robert Watts posted on
I’d say keep it.
The international ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code for the UK is GB. ( not Uk ) To send the tld off back into the pot, might just confuse issues further. Appreciate it’s all a bit messy out there..
Further, down the line when we lose Scotland or Wales or NI due to the behaviour of English politicians in Westminster and are no longer a “United” Kingdom we may well decide that a .Uk tld just is no longer fit for the island of Britain and in this regard the largest of which will be “Great” Britain.
Will someone then decide that the use of .uk is politically inept or embarrassing and hark for the return of gb? Possibly
I’d keep it, contingency etc.
Comment by Prof L Schnurr posted on
wholeheartedly agree. A resource which may well be needed in future.
Comment by Matthew Harris posted on
Great rid... Hardly anyone outside of government even recognises the distinction between the UK and Great Britain.
Comment by Maximilien posted on
We do, it's English lesson 101. And English is universal, quite unfortunately
How can you learn it without some understanding of the difference between each nation, GB, and the UK ?
UK politics has also been all over the news for some years.
But from oversea, I don't see much impact of removing the .gb domain.
It's actually cool, as using GB refers to some geographic place, and not a country per se.
What makes the UK ? Ruling on its land all over GB and beyond ? Or serving UK ideals to citizens ?
It's a positive message to retire the GB domain.
Comment by Simon Gray posted on
What might help inform the commentary is knowledge of exactly how much resource it takes to hold on to it? There’s a difference between it taking a staff member a day a month and £100,000 a year to keep on top of it and it take a staff member a day every three, six, 12 months and £10,000 a year.
.gb might be reserved anyway as a country TLD, but are all two-letter TLDs reserved as country TLDs? So basically, whilst ICANN policy might prevent the newly-formed Republic of Gabloggi from taking over the TLD, is there a potential risk if it’s released of ICANN creating a new gTLD for companies which specialise in some kind of cosmetic surgery for mouths?
(I have no horse in the chukkah on this so have no opinion one way or the other as to the outcome, beyond wanting to ensure a decision isn’t made which is regretted in the future)
Comment by Chris Woods posted on
Keep it, start using it for select things (akin to how public services and government and Royals get top-level .UK domains), or gift it to Gibraltar, but don't relinquish it to ICANN. They will surely hawk it commercially as a generic top-level TLD regardless of its current association with ISO country codes. Meanwhile the cost to HMG is surely incremental for maintaining .GB, even if parked and not actually serving registrations.
Comment by Anthony Pitcher posted on
Absolutely agree. I didn't know we had this. I have always disliked .UK. and UK itself. I am British and live in Britain, not Ukania.
Very glad recently to see Great Britain returning into more frequent use.
Comment by Terence Eden posted on
Hi Chris. Gibraltar already have a TLD - it is .gi.
ICANN don't offer two-letter TLDs as gTLDs. We have a good working relationship with them - as do most other countries - so I think that is unlikely to change.
Incremental costs are still costs. When we're looking for maximum efficiency from the public purse, we consider it prudent to examine whether we need to keep paying for this indefinately.
Comment by Rex Wickham (2020Media.com) posted on
The cost to keep this .gb extenion must surely be so tiny that it pales into insignificance. As others have said, our ISO country code is GB.
Re-obtaining in the future - beyond what we in the here and now can predict - would probably be far more difficult and expensive than maintaining the trivial cost of maintaining it.
Comment by Mark Goodge posted on
Are you able to tell us (via a subsequent blog post if you can't just comment on this one) how much resources are currently spent on maintaining it? Or should I just FOI it?
Comment by Hugh Davies posted on
How much resource is involved in keeping it? I'd wager virtually none, at least by government standards. How much resource would be involved in getting it back, were we to relinquish it? Again I'd wager a great deal, years of lawyer time, court cases and international wrangling. Keep it.
Comment by Ellenor Bjornsdottir posted on
running a DNS server that maybe receives 2,000 requests a day, 1,500 of which are valid, is a relatively inexpensive endeavour, in terms of electricity (even at current market prices in GB) and computing resources. I can't see it costing more than £70/mo in its current state, which I think is less than even one UC claimant. For all we care (although I hope not as it is used by the MoD), it could be an array of mid-2010s gaming PCs running Linux and a patched-up djbdns in wardrobes of government offices like #10 and Chequers, and if the fibre to them is fast enough and their SSDs are fast enough, nobody would notice.
If dot gb were more commonly used, I suspect you'd need a more competent server farm than I suggest here.
Comment by Steven Mc posted on
Guinea-Bissau may be interested in this TLD. Currently they use .gw.
Some sort of agreement may be necessary to remove spoofed websites, in this case.
Regardless of the status of NI or Scotland, the UK will remain an entity in its own right for quite some time, and thus .uk is enough. I see no need to hold on to it because it's already yours. The UK tried that with Ireland and India, and the British Museum continues to do so. It doesn't work out well and it's unnecessary also.
Comment by Jonathan Esk-Riddell posted on
Give it to Nominet to sell, someone will find it useful. The opening up of the domain names I'm recent years is a good thing.
The UK will likely be disbanded after October 2023 and it will be useful to have a domain for the landmass we live on.
Comment by Mark Goodge posted on
Yeah, I'd buy team.gb. Assuming the domain squatters don't get there first.
Comment by David Cutts posted on
I would favour keeping it. In fact, it might be good to bring it into use. The distinction between the UK and GB is real, especially if you consider the differences of law, tradition and now economics of NI. There are businesses that only operate in GB. Removing it is surely a political act, dressed up as tidying up the appendices to a standard...Leave it in please.
Comment by Samuel Pinder posted on
I'd say keep it with an empty DNS zonefile for minimal cost (just a set of passive nameservers like it already is now at JANET aka Jisc), that way it would be very easy to reactivate it administratively.
Norway already does this with the TLDs BV (Bouvet Island) and SJ (Svalbard and Jan Mayen) just in case they wish to bring them into use.
Like others say, it is possible in future we might not be such a "United" kingdom at some point and having GB already in the root zone would make it much easier to transition away.
Also let us not forget that historically TLDs have represented their countries' communities as a whole, not just their governments. Remember the TP TLD registered to the then 'Portugese Timor' whilst they were under Indonesian occupation before they gained independence and moved to the TL TLD (after renaming to Timor-Leste)? That was done on behalf of that country's community by Connect Ireland in the early days, because it was a community decision to establish it.
The UK TLD was originally run by JANET (as Ukerna) just like the GB TLD, but was redelegated to Nominet in 1996. Nominet was specifically founded on behalf of the Internet community to manage the increasing use of the UK TLD. My point is, it should not be just a government decision, but the decision of the community as a whole. I think at the very least GB should be redelegated to Nominet with an empty zonefile to keep it as a resource for minimal cost should the community decide to open it up in future should the need arise. In fact given that Nominet is a non-profit entity they might even be willing to keep the empty domain zone maintained free of charges on behalf of the community.
It would set a sad precedent if the decision to eliminate GB was made solely by the government.
Comment by Terence Eden posted on
Thanks Samuel - some important and interesting points there. I suppose part of what this blog post is trying to do is see if there's any interest in it.
Given that no-one has used it for a couple of decades, and there has been no stampede of people banging on our door to register it, I don't think the community can miss what it never used.
We can certainly look and see if there's commercial potential to sell .GB domain names. Given the paucity of registrations on some of the newer gTLDs, I don't think it will make significant money. But we'll consider it.
Comment by Jack Bond-Preston posted on
I could see people buying this domain. On top of the Great Britain meaning, people could also use to represent things like giga{byte,bit}, Gameboy, I'm sure there's more.
I will admit to not knowing anything about tld profitability, but I reckon it's worth investigating.
Comment by Owen Blacker posted on
I think Samuel put it best here.
While we don't *need* it right now, that doesn't mean we never will — after all, it's only 100 years since we recognised the loss of (most of) Ireland from the Union and the shape of Union may well change again within the next few years or decades.
And also, as several others have suggested, I'm sure there would be plenty of demand for registrations were it to be delegated to Nominet with some guidelines around use.
I'm with Paul Battley, though; I can't imagine that the cost of keeping it dormant could be a significant drain on the public purse.
Comment by Isaac R-G posted on
Given that the UK remains the assigned state to this ccTLD by virtue of the relevant ISO standard, and to remove it would be to pre-judge the future changes to the nature of our country, this is a bad idea.
The cost of maintaining the ccTLD is nominal at most, while the cost of disposing of it could be quite negative - not just in a future-facing sense. The UK government could suffer from losing control of domain it previously(albeit minimally) utilised. The domain as I understood was primarily utilised by the MoD for longer than most, and that alone should provide caution to the removal of it, though I appreciate that is under way.
Removal of this ccTLD from government usage is logical. To seek to end control of it is ill-advised. The UK continues to be recognised as GB or GBR in international standards around country codes and should not surrender while that remains the case.
It may, however, be worth permitting Nominet to grant usage of this ccTLD to those who own equivalent .uk domains. The geographic meaning of this domain is distinct from its country meaning, and for GB-wide insitutions, like the planned Great British Railways operation, or other such island-wide entities. Likewise (or alternatively), the UK government should make efforts to obtain England (eg. .en) or Northern Ireland domains, to recognise these nations in the same way Wales and Scotland are.
I am willing to submit additional details around this if requested.
Comment by Terence Eden posted on
Interesting points, Isaac. As we start the process of looking for a new registry operator for .gov.uk, we'll discuss whether some of your ideas can be incorporated.
Comment by James D. Stallard posted on
I say keep it. This is less about tidying up something that isn't really in a mess, and more about getting rid of something we can't see a current use for. Why focus on this? I know you guys aren't strapped for work over there!
Standards compliance is important and we probably erred by universally adopting .uk in the first place. Why err further by dumping .gb when we don't need to?
Further, there are plenty of uses for a universally accepted tld that would be closed off permanently if we decided to hand it back.
There is nothing whatsoever stopping us from continuing to park it and prevent registrations.
Comment by Paul Battley posted on
It's an unfortunate quirk of ISO 3166 that it gifted UKOGBANI with a code that describes only its largest island, and which excludes the most contended part.
It's hard to foresee any use of the .gb TLD here, beyond a hypothetical future Republic of Great Britain. However, domain name and (recent) number plates aside, the ISO code GB is widely used. I can imagine confusion, and even nefarious uses, from a TLD that matches the ISO code but refers to something else.
You can give up the TLD and rely on ICANN policies and vetos to prevent its reuse. That's a small risk. Or you can make sure that never happens by continuing to hold the TLD. That's an even smaller risk.
> Rationalising the estate of top level domains we have to monitor and protect will free up resources in our team.
> In fact, removing it might save us a small amount of money because we will have one less resource to monitor for security issues.
It seems to me that, if this were a Wikipedia article, someone would by now have come along and tacked a "citation needed" onto those statements. As others have pointed out, without any indication of what this cost is, it's hard to say whether the money and effort saved outweigh the risks of relinquishment.
Nonetheless, I suspect that the number is not going to be the kind of figure you'd emblazon on the side of the bus.
Comment by LeeGB posted on
Keep it and remove UK. If you tell someone you are from the UK they assume Ukraine.
The country really is GB and people say British. co.gb or gb makes more sense than UK to me.
Comment by David Prime posted on
Never give up a scarce resource. Keep it, pay the trivial cost to maintain it. One day we might need it.
Comment by A posted on
Why not make it available for the public to register like with .uk? It could generate a small amount of money and we would have another 2 letter top-level domain which is always nice to have.
Comment by MATTHEW MALTHOUSE posted on
I've changed my view on this since first reading about the question.
In the light of a few comments made I'd favour keeping it parked and unused.
Comment by Isaac posted on
Seems like virtue signalling that's unnecessary. I think it would be a cool TLD to buy domain names on, which will likely not even be related to Great Britain. UK might as well make a bit of profit off the TLD or even just park it to save future hassle.
Comment by sam posted on
I agree with the decision to retire the domain.
Regarding suggestions of holding on to it: digital hoarding is still hoarding. Something is either an asset or a liability: a small financial cost doesn't justify keeping something, benefits do. What's the benefit of owning .gb? What value does it add to the government's operations? If there's no value in owning .gb, then whether it's free to own or expensive to own, it should be released, because perhaps someday it can provide value to another entity (I am not convinced by the argument that we should hold on to it so nobody else can use it: it has never been associated with the UK, it is unlikely to be confused as referring to Great Britain if it were used by, say, Gibraltar).
Comment by Zoe Edwards posted on
Keep it and let anyone buy the domains like Tuvalu did with .tv. Could be a great source of revenue!
Comment by JB posted on
Is there an alternative option: making it available for registrations? Would much prefer over .uk
Comment by Joseph Conboy posted on
The correct short name for the country has been The United Kingdom since January 01st 1801. Sadly some people did revert to using 'Great Britain' in 1815 primarily to distinguish it from 'the United Kingdom of Portugal Brazil and the Algarve' which ceased to exist upon Brazillian independence in 1825.
I live in Poland where we all refer to your country as Zjednoczone Krolestwo which means United Kingdom. The French refer to you as the Royaume Unie. In fact as far as I am aware no-one outside of the UK uses the term Great Britain. UK is a great brand, embrace it and ditch the pre 1801 based archaic domain name for good.
Comment by Ellenor Bjornsdottir posted on
As someone who was born in and used to live in GB, and as someone who runs DNS infrastructure for a very small sole-proprietorship, I suggest retention and commercial use of .GB on the same basis as .UK, and requiring registrars to offer preferential rates to .UK domain lessees. Hear me out: I have my suspicions that the UK (of GB and NI) may become the Kingdom of GB (only) again within our lifetimes, and then I must assume ICANN would become somewhat cross if that happened, and seek a phase-out for .UK, so having the backup plan already warm is important to minimize disruption for GB businesses.
Comment by Ahmed Hassan posted on
Nice Article,
Understanding the differences between TLDs and how to choose the right one can help establish your brand and create a unique online presence. Additionally, understanding the role of TLD servers is important for ensuring that user requests are directed to the appropriate web server.
<a href="https://fudomains.com/blog/post/differences-between-top-level-domains">Here are Tips for How to Choose the Right TLD.</a>
Comment by Andrew Gabriel posted on
It's there because the ISO country code for the United Kingdom is GB, and it should stay while that's the case.
What this question should be is do you want to change the ISO country code for the United Kingdom from GB to UK? That probably comes with significant costs which are unlikely to be worth it, and you would probably never be able to get rid of GB even if you started using UK too, so it makes no sense to get rid of the top level GB domain.
It's also not inconceivable that the United Kingdom could cease to exist in our lifetimes and the country would revert to being Great Britain, and therefore retaining GB would be prudent on that basis too.
Comment by Dr. Matt Lee posted on
Keep it. As many others have said there's a very strong real possibility that the UK and Great Britain become far more distinct things in the near-future.
Comment by Evelyn Snow posted on
I might be a little late here, I'd say to keep it. As others have noted, .sj and .bv offer an example for reducing expenses/exposure while keeping .gb dormant. On the other hand, I think that it could be a valuable resource to some organisations with "GB" branding, even outside of possible future political developments, e.g. Team GB could then use team.gb instead of the much less satisfying teamgb.com
Comment by David Prior posted on
What analysis has been done of the potential revenue available from allowing registrations under .gb?
There's over 10M .uk domains registered - if 10% of these wanted to also register the equivalent .gb domain, that'd be 1M. If the govt could get £1/domain/year revenue, that'd be £1M/year - worth keeping for that.
Of course my guesses of 10% and £1/domain/year could be way out - hence the need for some proper analysis on this.
Comment by Alex Cochrane posted on
Worth keeping just for the sake of keeping in my opinion, letting go of a legacy domain could provide issues in the future if there is the need or desire to get it back.