ELI5: How do internet domains work? Who are you paying?

Social Networks Domain Names Music Streaming

Nomulus Landing Page

1

Nomulus

Google's open source, cloud-based registry platform for operating top-level domains.

#Coupons #Discount Codes #Online Shopping 1 social mentions
Reddit Landing Page

2

Reddit

Reddit gives you the best of the internet in one place. Get a constantly updating feed of breaking news, fun stories, pics, memes, and videos just for you.

The TLD registrars maintain a list of every domain registered to their TLD. So when you buy reddit.com from Google what actually happens is Google acts as a reseller. They maintain the location of reddit.com and every subdomain (www, old, etc). They tell the .com registrar that they are the authoritative source for reddit and they pay the registrar to add reddit to the list of domains registered with a .com.

#Social Networks #Social Network #Forums 3294 social mentions
Last.fm Landing Page

3

Last.fm

The world's largest online music service. Listen online, find out more about your favourite artists, and get music recommendations, only at Last.fm

Probably the most popular .fm site... last.fm.

#Music Streaming #Music Online #Music 2621 social mentions
Handshake.org Landing Page

4

Handshake.org

Decentralized certificate authority and naming

In the future things might change, there's discussions around decentralization of trust that now has accumulated with a select few (donut domains? Verisign?) Handshake is one such protocol that allows you to have decentralized trust and hence gives you freedom to have your own TLD, porkbun will even sell you one if you'd like but it's very much experimental today.

#Domain Names #Web App #Tech 60 social mentions