.cc is the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...

country code Country codes are short alphabetic or numeric geographical Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth description") is a field of science ...

top-level domain ( ccTLD) for the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, an

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country b ...

n territory. It is administered by a United States company,

VeriSign Verisign Inc. is an American company based in Reston, Virginia Reston is a census-designated place in Fairfax County, Virginia and a principal city of the Washington metropolitan area. As of the 2020 U.S. Census, Reston's population was 6 ...

, through a

subsidiary A subsidiary, subsidiary company or daughter company is a company owned or controlled by another company, which is called the parent company or holding company. Two or more subsidiaries that either belong to the same parent company or having a ...

company, eNIC, which promotes it for international registration as "the next .com". The .cc domain was originally assigned to eNIC in October 1997 by the IANA; eNIC manages the TLD alongside SamsDirect Internet. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus also uses the .cc domain, along with .nc.tr. Registration is made directly at second-level.

Usage

The .cc domain is preferred by many cricket and cycling clubs, as well as churches and Christian organizations, since "CC" can be an abbreviation for " Christian Church" or "

Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

". Some open-source/open-hardware projects, such as the Arduino project, use a .cc for their home pages, since "CC" is also the abbreviation for "

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has relea ...

", whose licenses are used in the projects. Business owners in Southern Massachusetts are rapidly adopting

Cape Cod Cape Cod is a peninsula extending into the Atlantic Ocean from the southeastern corner of mainland Massachusetts Massachusetts ( Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut Massachusett_writing_systems.html" ;"title="nowiki/> məhswatʃəwiːsət.htm ...

CC domains for local identity. Canadian Club whiskey has also used .cc domains for marketing purposes. It is also used for some community colleges, though other domains, such as .edu, are more popular.

Second level domains

gov.cu.cc, com.cc, net.cc, edu.cc, org.cc

A number of second-level domain names are also maintained by CoCCA, including "com.cc", "net.cc", "edu.cc", and "org.cc".

cc.cc, co.cc, cu.cc, cz.cc

These are not official hierarchies of .cc, but domains owned by companies who offer free subdomain registration.

co.cc

The co.cc URL has been known to host spammers, who create spam blogs, or "splogs", often with nonsense names. Due to such spamming, in July 2011

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially dat ...

removed over 11 million .co.cc websites from its search results. Legitimate sites (per Google's Webmaster Guidelines) on the .co.cc subdomain could send a reconsideration request to Google to have their specific site excluded from the ban. The abundance of cheap .co.cc domains had also been used by those who sold fake "anti-virus" programs. From 2012 to 2014, the co.cc website and name servers were not online. There was no formal statement by the company, but they did stop accepting new registrations some time before they closed. In 2018, co.cc was listed for sale for US$500,000.00. As of 2019, co.cc is registered to and in use by another entity.

References

External links

VeriSign .cc whois database lookup
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cc Cocos (Keeling) Islands Computer-related introductions in 1997 Council of European National Top Level Domain Registries members Country code top-level domains he:סיומת אינטרנט#טבלת סיומות המדינות sv:Toppdomän#C