Technology columnists are supposed to be wrong most of the time, given the uncertainty of their field. But Ivor Tossell in the Globe, who seems to be wrong about everything, was never more so than in sneering at the dot.ca registry in a column back on May 2.
Tossell thinks dot.com is the real suffix, and dot.ca is for losers. But look around the world. British sites are routinely dot.uk, Russian dot.ru, Australian dot.au, German dot.de and so on throughout the world of the WorldWideWeb. And Canadian sites are dot.ca.
The only place that doesn't understand national-domain suffixes is the place where the appropriate ending (that you never see) would be dot.us
Everyone but Tossell understands that dot.gov means American government, dot.edu means American university, and dot.com means either American business or wants-to-be-American business.
Late Update: Ivor Tossell points out that our viewpoints are not that far apart, and that he too was noting the American-wannabe flavour of dot.com. Fair enough. I was recalling, without rereading, a piece read sometime earlier (and the column had been paywalled by the time I got to commenting on it. Tech columnists tend to be digital-freedom advocates -- but somehow the newspapers that publish them always get their revenues. )
