Being an American citizen, I prefer to do business with American entities, regardless of what shitty opinion her detractors may express. I am loyal to her, more loyal than I would be to Tonga, or Montenegro, just to choose some random examples.
I don't think you're wrong that tiny pacific island nations are not stable or reliable, at this point they're all either a client state of China, the USA or Australia.
But I think it's also unfair and mean spirited to say that a country like Nauru (barely a country, IMHO, population of 12500 people) is "prostituting" itself by allowing 3rd party registrars to sell domains for a profit, since they have basically no other resource with the bird guano originated phosphate mines now being stripped clean. Would I use a Nauru domain? No. Do I go out of my way to insult them on the internet? Also no.
Btw, I highly doubt Nauru makes much money selling their ccTLD, they manage it directly on the island and each domain costs a whopping 500$/year.
Better examples: Tuvalu (.TV), Anguilla (.AI)
Both of these countries (anguilla is not independent though) only get a cut of the money from the domains; all the technical management is done by GoDaddy for .TV and Identity Digital for .AI. In my opinion, very sad.
.AI was run by a local guy in Anguilla (Vince Cate) utilizing the https://cocca.org.nz/ domain SaaS, but Identity Digital took over in late 2024.
> I highly doubt Nauru makes much money selling their ccTLD, they manage it directly on the island and each domain costs a whopping 500$/year.
Yeah, can't imagine anyone buying any of these domains. I mean yes, it's literally the exact word for "naked" in French, but nobody speaks French so there's definitely no chance they make any money
"The most common translation for "naked" in French is nu (masculine) or nue (feminine)."
NU is the country code for Niue.
Not Nauru. Nauru is NR.
NU is an interesting story, the control of the domain was granted in exchange for providing internet services to the island, and its operation was later transferred to the Swedish Internet Foundation. The islanders want the domain back
