The 29th Olympic Games has used beijing2008.cn instead of beijing2008.com as their official website. When people visit www.beijing2008.com they'll be redirected to www.beijing2008.cn. It's the first time in Olympic history that a non-.com domain name has been used for the official website.

The general principle of creating an official Olympic Games domain name is to combine the name of the city, the year of the event and a .com extension. For example the Athens Olympics used Athens2004.com as its official domain name.

The Beijing Olympic Games also combines the name of the city and the year of the event as the official domain name but uses the .cn extension instead of .com.

The .cn is China's domain name. It can not only indicate that the website is located in China but also display the country's strength in the world Internet industry. In 2004 at the Athens Olympic Games, the official website attracted more than 100 million visitors.

It's expected that the official website of 2008 Beijing Olympics will attract more than 500 million visitors.

Background information of .cn domain names

The highest authority managing .cn domain names in the country is China Internet Network Information Center. Many domestic companies and the China offices of foreign firms use .cn domain names to assist in extending their Chinese markets. In November 2006, a mobile business service provider paid 3.3 million yuan to simply buy the m.cn domain name.

(China.org.cn by Wang Sining, December 14, 2006)