People who can demonstrate they or their business have a connection to Australia will be able to purchase new domain from Thursday
Australian web addresses will soon be shorter with the launch of .au domains, allowing people to drop the .com for the first time.
From Thursday, people who can demonstrate they or their business have a connection to Australia will be able to purchase .au domains. It is the first time the .au domain has been available for purchase after auDA, the organisation that manages Australian domains, launched the product after years of consultation.
“We heard from more than 97,000 people, the overwhelming majority of whom were in favour of the introduction of short, simple, distinctly local domain names,” the auDA CEO, Rosemary Sinclair, said.
Anthony Mayer, the founder of Online is Easy, a company specialising in setting up websites for small businesses, said buying a domain in Australia was much fairer and a “level playing field” for people compared to the “cowboy” areas of buying .com or other domains where people often squat on popular or speculative domains.
To have a .com.au you need an ABN, while you need to be a charity or not-for-profit for .org.au. Under the new .au domains, you just need to demonstrate a connection to Australia, but ultimately the domain will still be managed by auDA, meaning people can lodge a complaint if someone tries to buy a domain not relevant to them.
“I think it’s really cool that Australia is actually leading the way [with] ethical, open and fair internet,” Mayer said.
Businesses that already have a domain under .com.au or a similar site will have priority status to register the corresponding .au website in the six months after the launch.
Thousands of sites are reserved from purchase except in limited circumstances, including sites like gov.au, banker.au, olympics.au and others blocked by the legislation governing the use of those names. AuDA has also sought to prevent potential scam sites being set up by reserving sites such as c0m.au, corn.au, and g0v.au.
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