Domaination
When many people think of the Caribbean island Anguilla, their minds might typically jump to its beautiful white sand beaches, clear waters, or local food, rather than… AI.
Last year, however, the 16-mile-long British overseas territory bagged a whopping $32 million from web developers looking to cash in on the artificial intelligence boom by registering their sites to Anguilla’s now-lucrative “.ai” domain — a trend that accounted for more than 10% of the nation’s GDP, per the NYT.
.competitive
Of all the top-level domains (TLDs to the website builders amongst us), “.com”, first registered in 1985 by symbolics.com, has long reigned supreme, reportedly taking a 46% market share of internet addresses as of December ‘23.
Despite dot-com’s storied influence on our economy and internet culture, a flurry of online entrepreneurs have turned elsewhere in recent years. Indeed, Google searches for “ai domain” overtook “.com domain” for the first time ever in June last year, with Anguilla’s government collecting between $140 and multiple thousands each time its TLD is used in a website name bought at auction.
