The Australian ICT and business communities yesterday celebrated 25 years on top with .au domain names at a gala event held at Melbourne Museum. AusRegistry, the provider of .au domain names, chief executive, Adrian Kinderis, said Australia is “punching above its weight in cyberspace”.
“Registrations in the .au domain hit the 2 million mark in March 2011, putting it into the top 10 country codes worldwide,” Kinderis said in a statement. “In fact, the .au domain has the highest penetration rate in the world for regulated namespaces with restricted eligibility when you take into account our population.”
Peak self-regulatory body for the .au domain space, .au Domain Administration (auDA) chief executive, Chris Disspain, said the online environment provided by .au is “strong and safe”.
“Just as Australia has a proud identity that it projects to the world, the .au space does the same for our online presence,” Disspain said. “.au is Australia’s home on the Internet. It’s a safe, reputable environment and Australians know it. That’s why more and more people and companies are gravitating towards .au names that allow us to shop, live, work and play online with confidence.”
According to Disspain, Australian businesses support the .au namespace because it’s the most efficient way for them to identify as a trusted Australian organisation on the Internet.
Seek marketing director, Helen Souness, echoed this sentiment and said being an Australian owned business the .au ensures the company is quickly identified as local and relevant for the Australian jobseekers.
Earlier this year auDA announced the two millionth .au domain name registration; currently there are 2,094,149 registered .au domains. Dissapain attributed the growth to an increased number of companies registering their businesses online.
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