Dotless domains on gTLDs are prohibited. Technically can work (albeit with risks not easily solvable as explained in ICANN link) but is not allowed.

https://features.icann.org/dotless-domains

is http://bestbuy./ dotless?

I would think yes, despite the nomenclature, and that there is technically supposed to be a dot after the tdl.

You _can_ put a dot at the end, but it's not required https://news.ycombinator.com./

It's to clearly identify a domain as a FQDN and not as a subdomain of your search domain.

then how does http://ai/ exist?

That’s not a gTLD, it’s a ccTLD.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24442033 for why it’s allowed on ccTLDs

That only works in Chrome for me so I assume it became sentient somewhere deep in the googleplex and is trying to escape.

Doesn't seem to work in Edge.

Works in Waterfox for me as well.

Clearly, it is succeeding.

I guess the problem with this is interoperability issues with LAN hostnames.

ccTLDs are so old that no actual rules were codified. As such they can do all sort of stuff. Like bare domain names for things like email.

> http://bestbuy will get re-write to .com by firefox, I don't like that

You can disable this in firefox by setting "browser.fixup.alternate.enabled" to "false" in about:config

You might have to disable autocomplete too...

I always disable that sort of thing. I figure that when I type a URL in the address bar I'm not making a suggestion and I don't want my browser pulling up some other site instead, especially not based on some guess or assumption about what I "actually" wanted.

>http://bestbuy will get re-write to .com by firefox

Really? For me Firefox says it couldn't find the site and only asks if I've meant 'www.bestbuy.com'

http://bestbuy./ should force a non-rewrite.

Ah I am running much older ESR, maybe they finally changed behavior.