Even experienced geographers probably have to look for Anguilla on the map first: The British overseas territory is located in the Caribbean, to the right of Puerto Rico and northwest of Guadeloupe. Two ports, a few hotels and fantastic beaches: For a long time Anguilla lived primarily from tourism. But now a new source of income is becoming increasingly important: artificial intelligence.
It is not as if there were particularly talented scientists among the almost 15,000 inhabitants or as if there were extremely clever computers on the main and secondary islands. Anguilla was just lucky, i.e. the right top-level domain, the abbreviation that is on the far right at the end of an internet address. In the case of Germany, for example, it is “.de”, in France it is “.fr” and in Anguilla it is “.ai” – just like “Artificial Intelligence”, the English term for artificial intelligence.
The industry is currently booming like no other, millions in venture capital are being pumped into start-ups and these in turn often pay a lot of money to be able to register their company addresses under the Anguilla domain. The hope is that this will increase recognition value and strengthen the brand. Even Elon Musk chose an .ai extension for his AI project.
This is now bringing a golden shower of fees to little Anguilla: the administration in the capital with the nice-sounding name The Valley is said to have collected 32 million last year alone – ten percent of the gross domestic product.
This is quite remarkable, but not an isolated case. Other countries have also done good business with their domains, including many small states and islands. ICANN, the non-profit organization responsible for assigning the endings, assigned the Federated States of Micronesia the abbreviation “.fm” in 1995 – as if it were designed to be used by radio stations. In the Caribbean, Antigua and Barbuda and its ending “.ag” are of interest to German stock corporations, and in the South Pacific, Scandinavians have taken a liking to Niue because its domain “.nu” sounds like “now” in Danish or Swedish.
The island state of Tuvalu also has a very popular domain name
However, the most successful example of domain name marketing to date is the island state of Tuvalu, also located in the middle of the Pacific, and its “.tv” abbreviation. Television stations all over the world have registered their addresses under this extension, and there are now also tons of streaming providers. In the past, this has brought Tuvalu so much money that the income was not only enough to expand electricity supplies and scholarships, but even to pay for the process of joining the United Nations. You probably won’t find a nicer example of international understanding thanks to the World Wide Web.
But while people in Tuvalu have been benefiting from the money from domain allocation for years, the boom in Anguilla has only just begun – and now they sincerely hope that it will last a little longer. In any case, part of the income has now been put into expanding schools. Human intelligence instead of artificial intelligence – certainly a smart step.