The
29th Olympic Games has used beijing2008.cn
instead of beijing2008.com as their official website. When people
visit
www.beijing2008.com
they'll be redirected to
www.beijing2008.cn. It's the
first time in Olympic history that a non-.com domain name has been
used for the official website.
The general principle of creating an official Olympic Games
domain name is to combine the name of the city, the year of the
event and a .com extension. For example the Athens Olympics used
Athens2004.com as its official domain name.
The Beijing Olympic Games also combines the name of the city and
the year of the event as the official domain name but uses the .cn
extension instead of .com.
The .cn is China's domain name. It can not only indicate that
the website is located in China but also display the country's
strength in the world Internet industry. In 2004 at the Athens
Olympic Games, the official website attracted more than 100 million
visitors.
It's expected that the official website of 2008 Beijing Olympics
will attract more than 500 million visitors.
Background information of .cn domain names
The highest authority managing .cn domain names in the country
is China Internet Network Information Center. Many domestic
companies and the China offices of foreign firms use .cn domain
names to assist in extending their Chinese markets. In November
2006, a mobile business service provider paid 3.3 million yuan to
simply buy the m.cn domain name.
(China.org.cn by Wang Sining, December 14, 2006)
