One of the oldest TLDs is moving to a different registry in April. First delegated on January 1, 1985, .GOV has been operated by the US General Services Administration since 1997. The new owner is another US federal agency, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
.GOV is exclusively used by US government organizations. Lawmakers believe that changing registries will strengthen the TLD’s public profile and also boost cybersecurity. Domain Incite reports that the registry change terms for .GOV are not specified in any ICANN documents and, therefore, there are no clear guidelines for the corporation to follow in this case. Formally, the domain has been one that was sponsored; it also has many characteristics of a ccTLD.
Pricing is another important issue. American legislators who approved the transfer were very clear about their request that .GOV domain names must be provided at no charge or a negligible cost. This does not seem to align with the ambitions of the domain’s technical infrastructure operator, Verisign, which currently charges $400 per domain per year. Perhaps the US Government will manage to justify its request and convince the company to lower the rates. However, for now, representatives of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency announced that no price changes in .GOV should be expected this year.
