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.gov (government) is the generic top-level domain used by the United States federal and local government. It was one of the original top-level domains, established in January 1985. The U.S. is the only country that has a government-specific top-level domain in addition to its ccTLD. Other countries typically use a second-level domain for this purpose, e.g., .gov.au for Australia, .govt.nz for New Zealand, (NZ), .gov.uk for the United Kingdom, .gc.ca for Canada, and .gouv.fr for France. Since the United States controls the .gov Top Level Domain, it would be impossible for another country to create a domain ending in .gov, for example .jp.gov. Some U.S. federal agencies use .fed.us rather than .gov. The Department of Defense and its subsidiary organizations use .mil. Some U.S. governmental entities use other domains, such as the use of .com domains by the United States Postal Service (usps.com) and the United States Army's recruitment website (goarmy.com, this trend is repeated at the recruitment websites of the other branches of the U.S. Military). Internet purists consider these usages to be improper, as these are governmental or military entities rather than commercial ones. All governments in the U.S. are allowed to use .gov, such as atlantaga.gov for the city of Atlanta, and georgia.gov for the U.S. state of Georgia. This was not always true; under an earlier policy, only federal agencies were allowed to use the domain, and agencies beneath cabinet level were required to use subdomains of their parent agency. There is a lack of consistency in addresses of state and local government sites, with some using .gov, some .us, and still others in .com, .org or another TLD.
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