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Google Purchases Shortest Domain Name Ever

valleywag.com — Google has purchased the shortest possible domain name to make it easier for Chinese users to find Google: g.cn.

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  • pleeker, on 11/08/2007, -7/+101I swear I've been getting spam from G.cn lately, haven't I? Or maybe just from every other freakin' .cn domain that's ever been registered.....
    • daxsymbiont, on 11/04/2007, -2/+32email is an ancient protocol that didn't take spam into account.

      anyone can put any "from" email address.
    • KrazyA1pha, on 11/04/2007, -2/+35> I swear I've been getting spam from G.cn lately, haven't I?
      Why are you asking us?
      • piesforyou, on 11/03/2007, -9/+3(double post)
      • piesforyou, on 11/04/2007, -4/+23I read pleeker's email all the time.

        Who would have thought that about his cousin and his great aunt betty! Blimey!
      • pollardito, on 11/03/2007, -0/+7because the spam came from diggreader@g.cn
    • ACrazyGerman, on 11/04/2007, -16/+2I guess no one knows about http://www.com
    • bingobongony, on 11/04/2007, -8/+1I don't get it...how do people get spam? I have never received one single piece of spam in my main e-mail accout ever. And that includes times when I know damn well my ISP was not filtering spam before it got to me. I have a fairly easy to guess username too. Yet I have never gotten a spam message in over 12 years. And I am not talkign about none that have gotten into my inbox. I am talking about none at all.
      • rompom7, on 11/04/2007, -0/+1I guess you don't sign up to anything... ever.
        • bingobongony, on 11/05/2007, -1/+1On my main account? No. You'd have to be a complete ***** idiot to use your main e-mail account in ANY online form.
    • skyscape, on 11/04/2007, -1/+2nothing comes close to .ru spam. Russian spammers are the most cleverest of all spammers on earth, every spam goes through every filter on the planet.
    • nytel, on 11/03/2007, -1/+1Good knows where you live.
  • orangesoda, on 11/08/2007, -4/+217At over $700 / share, I guess you can afford to buy whatever you want
    • hmunkey, on 11/04/2007, -0/+44220 billion dollar market value for a site with a white background and a search box. Nice!
      • jhshukla, on 11/04/2007, -2/+7don't forget the data center & all the logical complexity.
    • TommyTSquared, on 11/04/2007, -2/+26God, I remember when this stock went on sale... Did my parents listen to me? NOOOOOO Thanks, we could have been rich!
  • zaibatsu, on 11/03/2007, -6/+43I wanna buy Z!
    • msaleem, on 11/03/2007, -11/+4Z.pwns?
    • whatsupimphil, on 11/03/2007, -0/+26I thought you only have to buy a vowel.
    • AnarkeIncarnate, on 11/04/2007, -1/+22Z.googles.theydonothing.cn
      • hotbeefman, on 11/04/2007, -2/+1jiminy jilikers, radioactive man!

        and it's "my eyes, the goggles do nathing."
  • MikeonTV, on 11/08/2007, -12/+128I'm sure for most people hitting the 'home' button is still faster........I know all have google as you 'home' page.
    • mrASSMAN, on 11/04/2007, -4/+58iGoogle baby. (I wish they didn't call it that)
      • TheChihuahua, on 11/04/2007, -6/+48about:blank *shrug*
      • orangysb, on 11/03/2007, -7/+10personally i use netvibes extensively, much nicer and better imo
        • Lochie, on 11/03/2007, -6/+3Wow, thanks! Just checked it out, totally going to replace iGoogle for me.
        • cyberoidx, on 11/04/2007, -6/+1Dugg for showing me something new.

          Cause I'm F'in tired of 12 year old whining about www.com being shorter than g.cn
        • veloc1ty, on 11/04/2007, -0/+0I tried Netvibes but came back to iGoogle, it loads much quicker for me and I'm so used to hitting home for a Google search (even though I have a Google search box next to the address box.. lol).
      • evilpig, on 11/03/2007, -3/+4yes Netvibes is great.
      • rompom7, on 11/03/2007, -3/+14about:mozilla
      • piesforyou, on 11/03/2007, -3/+3gmail.com
    • markwilcox, on 11/03/2007, -2/+5Google Reader for me.
    • KibibyteBrain, on 11/03/2007, -10/+2Maybe not. On my computer, I'd have to do command+L g.cn, or 5 keystrokes. I'll take that over reaching for the mouse and poking around the screen anyday. And who knows, with spellchecking DNS, you might be able to get away with just command+L g soon...weird.
      • Karmavs, on 11/03/2007, -3/+41. the Mouse is faster than the keyboard for msot tasks (including this one) and…
        2. Most browsers have a shortcut for the home page
        • marksmayo, on 11/03/2007, -0/+6the mouse is NOT faster than the keyboard for most tasks. Your 2nd point is correct tho - a simple Alt-Home will suffice (Firefox, Windows).
          Apart from photo editing and game play, a decent typist who knows the shortcuts will be faster on the keyboard.
    • potp, on 11/03/2007, -4/+22Meh mine is just set to
      http://images.google.co.in/images?q=Porn
      • hmunkey, on 11/03/2007, -1/+16I love how there are no actual naked people on that page.
        • geminitojanus, on 11/03/2007, -0/+9Yeah, but there are two pictures of Scarlett Johansson, so all is well.
        • whatsupimphil, on 11/05/2007, -0/+8Google SafeSearch at its finest!
        • mitchlourens, on 11/04/2007, -0/+2hmm...i got two pictures of john ashcroft
        • skyshock1, on 11/03/2007, -0/+3You have to turn off SafeSearch. ;)
    • KrazyA1pha, on 11/03/2007, -0/+19Mine used to be, but it's unnecessary now that every modern browser has a built-in search field that can be pointed to Google.
      • hmunkey, on 11/03/2007, -13/+1Not IE7, since MS is a competitor.
        • tape250, on 11/03/2007, -0/+16Are you stupid? The search box in IE7 can be set to whatever search engine you want, including Google.
        • cyberoidx, on 11/03/2007, -1/+1which is a pretty cool trick if you observe how its captures the search url and var's
    • joeleslie, on 11/03/2007, -5/+13I just have a webpage stored on my HDD with links to all the sites I visit daily.
      • badjoke, on 11/03/2007, -0/+18You know they have this thing called "bookmarks", right?
      • takeda, on 11/03/2007, -3/+3Opera has a nice feature called Speed Dial. It shows each time you open a new tab.
        Also Ctrl+ opens one page from speed dial right away.
    • vornan19, on 11/03/2007, -7/+4My Browser opens to a blank page. 0 loading time!
      I got that habit from the old Netscape days. You know, version 3.1.4 and all. Everytime I installed it or an upgrade Netscape would open to Netscape.com before I could turn off cookies or anything! Then my harddrive would be littered with those damn cookies.

      Did I mention how much I like Firefox?
      Long live the Return of the Son of Netscape! Huzzah!
    • OrangeTide, on 11/03/2007, -2/+4Actually I made my own .html with a bunch of form entries for google, wikipedia, dict, etc. That way I'm only loading a local page instead of wasting bandwidth every time I open a browse window.
    • whatsupimphil, on 11/03/2007, -0/+16OK, I can't really be the only person on Digg with Digg.com as their home page.
      • Lixie, on 11/03/2007, -0/+7digg is my home page. Firefox has both a search button for google, and the navigation bar can be used for google search if you just type keywords.
      • RubberBinder, on 11/03/2007, -0/+5Digg is set to automatically open in a tab, but it isn't the first tab, Google is.
      • joegibes, on 11/03/2007, -0/+6I have a digg feed on iGoogle (I liked the name "Personalized Home" better).
      • MaddieCakes, on 11/03/2007, -0/+0Digg is my home page too.
      • missingnoh4x, on 11/04/2007, -0/+2Digg is technically set as my homepage, but it means nothing since I've configured FF to just open my tabs from last session each time.
    • cyberoidx, on 11/04/2007, -1/+9Opera Speed Dial Baby! FTW.
    • jhshukla, on 11/03/2007, -0/+2Alt+Home
    • kelchm, on 11/04/2007, -0/+4Actually, digg is my home page.
    • AmICoolNow, on 11/04/2007, -1/+2Mine is blackle.com.
    • Lord_oftheTrons, on 11/03/2007, -1/+2http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

      APOD great image each day. Plus it usually ends up on the frontpage of digg three days later.
    • Lord_oftheTrons, on 11/04/2007, -4/+1http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

      APOD great image each day. Plus it usually ends up on the frontpage of digg three days later.
    • stalefries, on 11/03/2007, -0/+1Haha, mine's about:blank
      • andre321, on 11/03/2007, -0/+1i lol'd
        ps. not really.
      • AbsurdParadox, on 11/04/2007, -0/+1Anyone remember when you could put HTML after the about: in the address bar in IE?

        I once designed a 5 page site all in one giant about: tag, with links to more about: tags. CLEVAR
        /brag
  • chicoer2001, on 11/08/2007, -2/+107It will all be a waste of money when the chinese government censors the site.
    • KibibyteBrain, on 11/03/2007, -0/+7That might be part of why Google does stuff like this in China. The Chinese government would censor Google with even less thought if Google stopped paying into China so much and so often. It could be a way of keeping China happy. This goes for lots of US companies doing business there, or at least is perceived to be the case by those working for those firms.
    • kurttrail, on 11/03/2007, -1/+2LOL! Google is doing the censoring FOR the chinese gov't.
    • Jelfish, on 11/03/2007, -0/+1I believe most tech savvy people have ways of getting around censorships. Maybe Google is trying to fuel a cultural revolution.
    • fufuku, on 11/03/2007, -0/+3At least there will still be Gookle.cn , which I can't believe is actually a site.
  • llsethj, on 11/03/2007, -12/+2x.cn
  • ninedesign, on 11/04/2007, -18/+10Hah, it actually works.
    • Lorian, on 11/04/2007, -2/+18What were you expecting?
      • DaisyFresh, on 11/03/2007, -0/+3Oh my! Something on the internet that isn't true? That can not be!
    • willemmulder, on 11/03/2007, -3/+10you get dugg down, but I doubt how many people actually tried it out. Dugg up.
    • TyR88, on 11/03/2007, -0/+2Why shouldn't it?
  • NyteStarNyne, on 11/08/2007, -19/+169Because everything in China is tiny.
    • sTiVo, on 11/05/2007, -4/+29Sure it is. Well, except the country itself.
      • srg13, on 11/05/2007, -3/+29And the population...
      • Kanidia, on 11/03/2007, -0/+2And the economy... (I'm assuming that piesforyou tried to respond to this comment, but responded to the other one by accident)
    • potp, on 11/08/2007, -10/+46We cannot achieve so much with such small penis, but you American wow, penis so big, so big penis!
      • Jazzanova, on 11/08/2007, -1/+6The tiny penis fallacy. If you're curious enough to google it, and I am being insecure, Asian men are about 5.5", white men about 6" and black men 6.5"--1/2in difference between the races isn't exactly much for any of the races to be boasting about. I'd like to know what it is for Hispanic men, being one myself. But I gotta say, why is it so accepted to see Digg users so consistently mock the supposed penis size of Asian men in any post that has an reference to Asia? Don't say it's cause Digg users are meek, out of shape, pale skinned adolescents living in their mother's basement; that easy racial stereotypes are they way to alleviate their own insecurities--merely another limiting stereotype consistently perpetrated here and as irritating but less offensive as the Asian penis jabs. (Although I AM slightly out of shape.)

        Just as we know it's against better judgment (and truth) to mock Hispanic diligence or African American intelligence why do so many here deem it okay to mock Asian penis size with so much sense of enjoyment?
    • piesforyou, on 11/03/2007, -8/+3And the economy
    • hmunkey, on 11/03/2007, -6/+12Exactly, the penises.

      /Kidding, I just made a mean racist comment. :-(
    • ihate2reg4u, on 11/03/2007, -1/+1I like Chinese.
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYJG6RVggCE
  • andrewcsayer, on 11/08/2007, -3/+214Next week - China censors the letter G!
    • KiTchMe, on 11/03/2007, -0/+6If they do, I'd blame Kenny G for it
    • stlWill, on 11/03/2007, -0/+15Then what will Sesame Street be brought to us by?
  • tehrob, on 11/03/2007, -11/+3But... it's in chinese.. :(
  • str3ama, on 11/03/2007, -12/+4lol there's stil k.kk or p.ee
  • redrock34, on 11/03/2007, -12/+4I never understood how a public company like Google can work in a communist country. I'm not talking about morally or ethically, but doesn't a communist government own everything in the country?
    • jlgolson, on 11/03/2007, -1/+6China is not a 100 percent totalitarian country. There are pseudo-capitalist leanings, especially within the marketplace. The government does not own everything, they government does not control everything. They realized that they must open up their marketplace to foreign investors in order to continue their rapid growth and catch up to the west. Whether it will work in the long run is a very different question.
      • Chandon, on 11/03/2007, -0/+1Try not to confuse communism and totalitarianism. A communist democracy is conceptually possible, and totalitarian capitalism is reasonably common in practice (Hong Kong and Singapore lean in that direction).
    • ShosuroYuu, on 11/03/2007, -0/+3It's not communist (in the "Communist Manifesto sense) it is a totalitarian state which has free market tendencies as of late and is communist in name only.
      It doesn't matter how the cat looks as long as it catches the mouse (to paraphrase an old Chinese leader).
  • ojno1rules, on 11/08/2007, -2/+64meeting with 10,000 employees + "any ideas for the new Chinese domain?" + ( long silence) = g?
    • vornan19, on 11/08/2007, -1/+17I have a friend named Kay. She has this joke about how she got named.
      See, her parents immigrated from Mexico. When her Mother was due they rushed to the hospital. The birth went fine, no problems. The Doctor asked the happy parents what they would like to name the baby. The parents not speaking English well replied; ¿Qué?

      Thank you, thank you! All be here all week!
  • Purrperl, on 11/03/2007, -3/+2
    Isn't that a DNS root server?
    • jphoude, on 11/03/2007, -0/+1the root nameservers are at root-servers.net
      a.root-servers.net
      b.root-servers.net
      etc...
    • geminitojanus, on 11/03/2007, -0/+1g.root-servers.net

      Ran by the Defense Information Systems Agency.
      • Purrperl, on 11/03/2007, -0/+2What do you make of the news of US v/s China in a cyberwar conflict? China has its own root servers, and alternative TLD's. The US has the authoritative DNS. Which is more advantageous, if any?
  • darnit, on 11/04/2007, -7/+3w.w
  • mishsquish, on 11/08/2007, -9/+34Shortest domain name ever? What about the other 21 letters + .cn?
    • coollettuce, on 11/08/2007, -1/+103LOL, you mean the other 25 letters.
      • LaueOfficer, on 11/04/2007, -10/+2china banned I and X
      • LaueOfficer, on 11/04/2007, -8/+2I'd tell you the other ones they banned but it would reveal my sources.... (or I just can't add either)
    • thailand1972, on 11/04/2007, -4/+1....and 0 to 9 too.....
    • kajoob, on 11/04/2007, -2/+30the letter 'g' in china is slightly narrower than all the other letters
      • gbarger, on 11/04/2007, -0/+18they must have a really fat i and l.
      • gbarger, on 11/04/2007, -1/+14bury me...sorry, I'm a moron and clicked submit twice.
        • bingobongony, on 11/04/2007, -0/+15bury you, or your comment? Burying you seems a bit harsh for an honest mistake.
      • stalefries, on 11/05/2007, -0/+3G is anorexic.
    • potifar, on 11/03/2007, -0/+1Yeah, they're not any shorter.
    • dlsspy, on 11/08/2007, -0/+2The country of Oman used to have an A record on their TLD. I discovered this because I had a router named ``mom'' at the time and I typo'd one day trying to telnet to it:

      > telnet om
      Trying x.x.x.x...

      BSD resolvers would attempt a TLD resolve for a non-dotted hostname, but most other resolvers wouldn't, so technically you might have to use ``om.'', but still, that's two letters and a dot.
    • mishsquish, on 11/05/2007, -0/+2My alphabet is good, my math isn't.
  • moyness, on 11/03/2007, -18/+3@mishquish : Don't you mean 25 other letters ? :|
  • stephenhacking, on 11/05/2007, -1/+1The title is misleading - But good info..
  • daxsymbiont, on 11/04/2007, -12/+7the best domain is www.com

    as a name
  • tynansanger, on 11/03/2007, -5/+1Next up, the letter G will be auctioned off at Christie's.
  • SirDivineGod, on 11/08/2007, -4/+18Might be shortest number of pixels when written on screen, but the site m.dk for the Copenhagen Metro has been up and running for some years now. Buried as Inaccurate.
    • vornan19, on 11/03/2007, -0/+7Wow! January 31, 1997 versus Google.com September 15, 1997.
      He's right people! It's even older than Google so stop digging him down.
      And it's up. http:m.dk
      In English too. http://m.dk/en/welcome
  • insideitalian, on 11/08/2007, -2/+77It seems that g.cn stands for "great censored news".
  • Stelex, on 11/08/2007, -4/+16The shortest domain name is on Norfolk island, simply NF
    However, you have to type www.nf so your browser recognises it as a domain name rather than search criteria :-)

    • VegaObscura3, on 11/08/2007, -0/+8Are you sure it isn't that www is the website name and .NF is like .CN or .com?
      • SonicAD, on 11/03/2007, -1/+1You COULD just type it in the check... and he's right about it, it's just www.nf. Odd.
      • lime148, on 11/03/2007, -0/+5Yes, that's it. NF is the top level domain for Norfolk Island. www.nf is no more special than www.com, www.de or www.jp, except www.nf denies requests that have the optional www in the URL (www.www.nf won't work, while www.www.de/jp/com do).
  • zennode, on 11/03/2007, -6/+1China likes things simple
    • MrSlumberjack, on 11/03/2007, -0/+1You musn't have seen the pen spinning video
  • sputnike, on 11/08/2007, -0/+3I recon that this will be a move Google ploys for all domain names, such as g.co.uk and stuff. I mean google.com/ig, it could be a replacement for that.
    • GreenAlien, on 11/03/2007, -0/+1If they auction off the single letter .com names then g.com would be pretty cool. Contender for the easiest to remember domain name.
  • BenBenMan, on 11/08/2007, -0/+8Does this mean Baidu will buy b.cn to compete?
  • SysStream, on 11/03/2007, -8/+1google.pwn.everything.com?
  • lozzd, on 11/08/2007, -0/+11So? I've been using email from "k.st" for years. http://k.st
  • anachronox, on 11/04/2007, -3/+4digg if you immediately typed www..com
    www.a.com ?
  • dsm88, on 11/08/2007, -2/+12http://x.org
  • wolfer, on 11/03/2007, -0/+1Oh that silly google.
  • aajjcckk, on 11/03/2007, -7/+0Shortest domain name?! BLATANTLY not true. Click or enter into your browser:

    http://va
    (NOTE: This seems not to work on IE 6 because Microsoft are *****, but does work on FF. And yes, it's genuine.)

    Ha! Didn't think that would work did you? :) Teh internets still haz sum suprizes!
    • SysStream, on 11/03/2007, -0/+0its http://www.va.com and its still long. http://va is not indeed the shortest, but it'll make you more lazier
    • ShosuroYuu, on 11/03/2007, -1/+2It didn't work for me (on FF in Ubuntu).
    • CrookedAsterisk, on 11/03/2007, -1/+1Jesus Christ. http://va works because Firefox automatically does a Google "I'm Feeling Lucky" search when you enter something other than a domain name into the address bar. That's why it doesn't work in IE.
      • vornan19, on 11/03/2007, -1/+1I thought it was becasuse of the Domain Name System.
        Like, I can type IBM in the address bar and it should resolve to ibm.com. There! I just did that and it works.
        It doesn't work in MSIE because IE uses the URL field as a search field.
        • CrookedAsterisk, on 11/04/2007, -0/+1ibm.com came up because it was the best match for "IBM." Type "example" in the address bar and you won't get example.com or whatever, but some band's MySpace page (as of now). Search for "example" in Google and the same URL is the top result.
    • jphoude, on 11/03/2007, -1/+2There's also http://ca./
      "ca." works in firefox but you have to put the final dot, or it does a google search.
    • struds, on 11/03/2007, -0/+1and my god it works in opera because the browser automatically adds the www. and .com for you. (it should also work in IE if you hit control and enter)
    • aajjcckk, on 11/03/2007, -1/+1I admit it. I'm an idiot. Sorry for parent post.
    • Chandon, on 11/03/2007, -1/+1http://va./ gets you the vatican website.
    • Chandon, on 11/03/2007, -0/+1http://va./ gets you the vatican website.
  • feedmecereal, on 11/03/2007, -2/+1http://i.am/
  • yakaledo, on 11/04/2007, -1/+0I have ba.ma for sale.
  • jamespo, on 11/03/2007, -2/+0A friend used to have http://f.ly/

    Libya nicked it back though, now he just uses http://www.fly.co.uk
  • zhulien, on 11/03/2007, -2/+1that's the lamest excuse I've ever heard to register a domain name
  • 6502programmer, on 11/08/2007, -2/+3The shortest chinese domain name possible for the smallest google index possible, due to bowing to censorship request. Fitting, no?
  • headswine, on 11/03/2007, -3/+1http://www.floort.com/?fid=21
  • Merick, on 11/03/2007, -1/+2I'm pretty sure "i.cn" is just a bit shorter.
  • ORBAT, on 11/03/2007, -2/+2And this is newsworthy... how?
  • ashwin18, on 11/03/2007, -5/+1I miss the days when Google was nothing but an 'internet search website'...
  • gracias, on 11/08/2007, -1/+25www.midget.com is pretty short. ha :(
    • donkeySays, on 11/03/2007, -1/+1But www.midgetporn.com is slightly more interesting than that!
  • JasonCox, on 11/08/2007, -0/+2I thought ICANN was against single letter domain names?
  • biff198, on 11/03/2007, -0/+2I was hoping they'd have found some way of using a period in the URL in place of the text, so that it would be something like www...com
  • Nostromo13, on 11/03/2007, -5/+4*insert Chinese penis joke here*
  • dxgg, on 02/05/2008, -0/+1Pssst! Would you like to buy an O?
  • snakevenom52, on 11/03/2007, -0/+0Ooh... Chinese Google... If you start typing something in it, it gives you a list of things you pick and the number of hits it received...Fun!
    • donkeySays, on 11/03/2007, -2/+1Wrong! A communist Google representative visits you everyday at 9:37 PM to check what you have been doing on your computer the whole day. He comes with a gun.
    • Kanidia, on 11/03/2007, -0/+1That's called Google Suggest. Almost all regions have it.
  • Rustymetal, on 11/03/2007, -5/+1who cares?
    OMGOMG i registered the LONGEST domain name!!!!!!!!!!!! ALERT THE INTERNT
  • sophia269, on 11/03/2007, -0/+8I'm sure Chinese Internet users are saying.. "When it was google.cn it was too long to type. However now that I only have to type in g.cn, I'm sold!"
  • bmson, on 11/03/2007, -0/+1no...

    1.is and 2.is and 9.is and c.is e.t.c.
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