ws-domain Domain

The domain extension .ws is the country-specific top-level domain of the Independent State of Samoa, an island state in Polynesia which comprises the western part of the Samoa Islands. Until 1997 the island state was officially called Western Samoa. For this reason the two letters w and s were chosen for the domain extension Samoa on July 14th, 1995, when this domain extension was launched. The domain extension is administered by the company Computer Services Ltd. which in turn is subordinate to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade of the country.

Allocation guidelines of the domain extension

An assignment of domains ending in .ws takes place exclusively on the second level. There are no special restrictions for the assignment. This means that a domain ending in .ws can be applied for by any private person or any company with or without a registered office in Samoa and can choose its desired domain.

Use of the domain extension

Since the infrastructure in the island state itself is not so well developed, only a few of the approximately 196,000 inhabitants of Samoa have access to the WWW. The domain extension is mainly used by companies and private individuals who do not see the domain extension .ws as a country-specific reference, but rather use it as an abbreviation for "website". This type of use is very widespread worldwide. Because of this possibility to use the two letters of the domain ending for other purposes, a registration of the domain ending is very popular. The government of Samoa had lodged an indirect complaint against this procedure. Because the government feared a "confusion" with the also existing domain ending .webpage. However, the competent authority did not see these fears.

Meaning

Since there are very few companies on Samoa and hardly any inhabitants of the island state have access to the WWW, the importance of the domain ending .ws in the island state itself is quite low. As already mentioned, however, the domain ending is very popular with companies and also private persons from all over the world, who use .ws as an abbreviation for "website".