Shorter .uk web address idea shelved by Nominet
 

This makes a change, they haven't given up yet though :2 cents:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21609406

"Nominet, the organisation that oversees all UK web addresses, has decided not to go ahead with an optional new service for sites ending with ".uk".

Companies would have had the chance to take the address "name.uk" rather than "name.co.uk".

It would have cost more to register but extra security features would have been provided to sites that opted to change.

But a three-month consultation had revealed there was insufficient support for the idea, the body said.

While those taking part in the consultation had agreed a shorter URL would be beneficial, there had been concerns it would be confusing for consumers, especially as it would exist alongside the current ".co.uk" domain, Nominet said.

There was also support for one of the added security features proposed, which was that .uk sites would all be DNSSEC-signed (Domain Name System Security Extensions), making them harder to hack.

However, the idea of a "trust mark" stamp to indicate the security of the site had been greeted with "scepticism" the group said.

A revised proposal will now be drawn up by the not-for-profit organisation.

It will focus on security measures, pricing and registration verification, in response to the feedback received.

"We are going to explore whether it is possible to present a revised proposal that meets the principles of increasing trust and security and maintaining the relevance of the .uk proposition in a changing landscape," Nominet said in a statement.

"We would like to thank all those who took the time to give their views."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21609406

if both .co.uk and .uk existed it would cause confusion, also it would be especially bad for everybody who would need to buy both in order just to save their brand or type ins..

co.uk is so well known now that there would be no point having a .uk

.com is so well known but they have .co and many others.

Of course I do not support new extensions because it brings confusion, mistypes and so on.

and how many .co's have you seen?

They're never going to be able to launch it without massive opposition from current .co.uk owners unless they gave those owners precedence over the .uk domains (which would make .uk pointless and might then piss off .org.uk owners). There's really no way they can win, and the only reason they're considering it is for the initial money grab.

.com is a generic TLD. .co is Colombia, it's a country code (like .us, .tv, .me, .de) that they try to market as an alternative commercial domain.