There's been a lot of hype and publicity in the last few weeks about the .CO domain. Just about every domain name registration company is pushing it as the latest must have accessory for your website! In fact one such company is pushing it as a "new era"!
In reality the .CO top-level domain has been around for as long as .COM or .UK. It's actually the top-level domain for Colombia and as such is treated in a similar manner to .UK. For instance there are Colombian government websites on .GOV.CO domains. Sadly, they went for .COM.CO for businesses instead of .CO.CO!
Previously, there were strict rules on who could and who couldn't buy a .CO domain. However, these have now been relaxed and the inevitable bun-fight will soon begin. Here's the timetable:
April 1, 2010 - April 20, 2010: Sunrise A will allow registered Colombian trademarks to apply for exact match domains.
April 26, 2010 - June 10, 2010: Sunrise B will allow trademarks of national effect to apply for exact match domains.
June 21, 2010 - July 13, 2010: Landrush will allow anyone to apply for domain names of high commercial value.
July 20, 2010: .CO domains will become generally available.
In a sane and sensible world the answer is "probably not". The likes of Microsoft and BP will be buying .CO domains to protect their international trademarks but for most SMEs there's unlikely to be a compelling reason.
However, the web is still very much like the wild west. You can bet that there will be instances where unscrupulous developers are building websites that are abusing the .CO domain and building websites to compete with their .CO.UK counterparts. We've seen this before and we'll see it again.
My feeling is that the presence of the .CO domain in the UK market will confuse people. I think that major brands are likely to register the domain to protect their interest and then forget about it.
The elves are back...