.gov
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| country: | United States |
| Registry Provider: | General Services Administration (GSA) |
| Date Implemented: | 1985 |
| Type: | sponsored top level domain (sTLD) |
| Community: | U.S. government entities |
More information: 
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.gov is one of the original top-level domain names (TLDs) that was implemented in the root zone of the internet Domain Name System (DNS). The domain is a short term for "government." It is restricted for the use of government agencies in the United States, therefore it is considered a sponsored top-level domain name (sTLD). The other TLDs introduced by Jon Postel and Joyce Reynolds were .arpa .com, .edu, .net, .mil, and .org.[1] The General Services Administration (GSA), an independent agency responsible in supervising the businesses of the United States federal government serves as the administrator of .gov domain.[2]
Background
During the late 1980s, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) delegated the .gov to the Federal Networking Council (FNC), a group chartered by the National Science and Technology Council's Committee on Computing, Information and Communications (CCIC) to provide a forum for networking collaborations among Federal agencies to meet their research, education, and operational mission goals.[3]
On July 18, 1997, FNC granted the authority to administer and manage the operations of the .gov domain to GSA through the guidance of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Cite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag