I don't think thats clear at all. We have three people in this thread already confused on the issue.
I think the poster wasn't talking of the US government but of knowing which government a domain is related to by just looking at it. ".gov" is not clear while ".gov.uk" is clear due to the ccTLD.
> but isn't .gov "clearly affiliated to and managed by" the US government
Honestly, I don't believe that anyone is truly "confused" about the source of a .gov website, especially folks who are reading HN on a weekend. They might view it as arbitrary (it's not, really) but it's certainly not a "oh man I just don't understand how this could be the case" level of confusion.
I won't go so far as to say that the internet is an American invention but it was certainly primarily American in origin. .gov has been managed by the US government since the beginning.
Not the OP, but also American. For me it's clear because I've never seen a US government site on a non-.gov domain (though apparently some obscure ones exist as this submission points out), nor have I ever seen a non-US-government site on .gov.
The submission includes over 400 domains for the federal only list. That is more than "some obscure ones"
> nor have I ever seen a non-US-government site on .gov
How often are you going to non-US-government government sites? Being an American I could imagine you hardly if ever interact with any other government sites so maybe that could be attributed to selection bias.
> The submission includes over 400 domains for the federal only list. That is more than "some obscure ones"
The number has nothing to do with how obscure they are.
> Being an American I could imagine you hardly if ever interact with any other government sites
I have interacted with them many times. (1) to fill out various Covid-related entry forms when those were widely required, (2) to apply for visas, (3) purely out of curiosity (e.g. I’m sometimes curious what travel warnings/advisories other countries’ foreign ministries put out and how they compare with our own).
I suspect it depends on whether you know your early Internet history. The Internet was a US research and military project at first. It was US-centric for a long time. The original top level domains are all US-centric. Walmart.ca is Walmart Canada. Walmart.com is Walmart America. Similarly, .mil, .edu are for the US military and American universities. .gov fits into that scheme and if you know the rest it would follow that it's for the US gov.
All the documentation is very clear and the behavior is consistent. It’s sub optimal for countries utilizing a .gov.{country code} scheme, but it would be extremely expensive to change. Many non English speaking countries use a different abbreviation for their word for government, so it’s hard to argue that the status quo has to change to benefit “everyone.”
The us also has .mil locked up for mostly purposes.
Maybe this is my latent American nationalism showing, but isn't .gov "clearly affiliated to and managed by" the US government?
I think this bit was added as an edit or maybe I just missed it:
> an inherently international .gov domain
.gov is not inherently international for all the reasons in this subthread (and probably others as well)