Internet Says Goodbye To .YU Websites

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the body that oversees much of how the world wide web interacts, will say goodbye to .yu, the country code for the former nation of Yugoslavia.

ICANN, which oversees the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), put an end to .yu domains in 2006, phasing them into Serbia and Montenegro (.cs) and even further into Serbia (.rs) and Montenegro (.me).

This isn't the first time real-world politics have impacted the Internet. After the U.S.S.R. fell, the Soviet Union's home on the web became a set of independent domains (.ru / .by / .ua). In East Timor, independence changed the domain from .tp to .tl.