A popular domain may cease to exist

Last week, the British government announced that it has agreed to transfer ownership of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, while giving up the .io domain.

This was reported by the Ministry of Finance with reference to The Verge.

The Verge writes that the Chagos Islands were settled by the French in the 1700s, who brought slaves to the archipelago. In 1814, the French handed over control of the Chagos Islands and the island nation of Mauritius to the British. When the British seized power, the Chagos Islands remained dependent on Mauritius. In 1965, the United Kingdom granted Mauritius its sovereignty, but the government decided to separate the Chagos Islands, making them a British territory in the Indian Ocean.

The .io domain is a national top-level domain allocated to the British Indian Ocean Islands. It was created in 1997 and immediately gained popularity among the owners of various resources, mainly in the areas of technology, blockchain, and innovative projects due to its uniqueness.

The government of a country usually has to receive revenue from all sites that are registered using a domain with the country code. For example, Anguilla, which has the country code AI, is projected to have earned between $25 million and $30 million last year from websites registered in the .ai domain.

The Chagos Islands are also making money from the .io domain. After all, thousands of high-profile tech startups and cryptocurrency companies such as itch.io, greenhouse.io, and opensea.io have taken the domain because "io" also serves as an abbreviation for the term "input/output," the Finance Ministry writes.

But now, according to the UK's final agreement, the Chagos Islands will become part of Mauritius, a move that Chagossians say the government did not even discuss with them. With this change, the British territory in the Indian Ocean no longer exists, which calls into question the future of the .io domain.

Ігор Льов