On 24 Sep 2005 at 15:28, Skeeve Stevens wrote:

> 
> I totally disagree with you that people view .com/.net/.org as foreign
> domains these days.
> 
> Australian businesses with an Australian market do not have to reside in the
> .au name space, and nor do I think that it really makes any difference
> anymore.
> 
> www.cityrail.info
> www.countrylink.info
> www.sydneyferries.info
> www.anz.com
> 
> 
> 
> NSW Government - I don't these any of these do business outside NSW, much
> less Australia
> 
> If I wanted to waste 2 hours, I am sure I could find hundreds of examples of
> Australian businesses, organisations, governments/councils that use
> international domains.
> 
> What a stupid argument.


Some time ago I was at a social gathering and an intellectual property lawyer was holding 
forth as they are wont. He suggested that a domain name registration was now more 
important than a trademark in establishing a business identity.

Most of our clients, where they can, register at least one gTLD version of their preferred 
domain in addition to the .com.au version. It's simply brand protection and in the scheme of 
things it's cheap.

Not having a .com.au domain name does not seem to be a bar to Google giving a site a 
decent page rank any more.

cb