Why .dev and Not .com: How I Chose My Website's Address
Most people expect a .com. I chose aumahinay.dev. Here is why, in plain words, and what it taught me about building things that are safe by default.
When I bought the address for this website on October 25, 2026, I did not pick a .com. I picked aumahinay.dev. Most people expect a website to end in .com, so you may wonder why mine does not. Isn't .com the "real" internet? Won't visitors get confused? These are fair questions. The answer says a lot about how I like to build things, so I want to explain it here in plain words, especially for anyone who is about to choose an address of their own.
First, What Is a Domain Name?
A domain name is the address people type to reach a website. Think of the municipal hall. The building is the website, and the address tells people how to find it. The last part of a domain, after the final dot, is called the top-level domain, or TLD. In aumahinay.dev, the TLD is .dev. In google.com, it is .com.
Each TLD is run by an organization called a registry, which keeps the master list of every name under it. Verisign runs .com. Google Registry runs .dev. You do not buy a name from the registry directly. You buy it through a registrar, a kind of store that sells names from many registries.
The Crowded Neighborhood Called .com
.com is the oldest and best-known TLD, and it is very crowded. According to Verisign's Domain Name Industry Brief, there were 166.6 million .com names registered as of June 30, 2026, out of 401.6 million domain names across all TLDs. That is more than four out of every ten domains on the internet.
With so many names taken, finding a short, clean .com that matches your own name is hard. People end up adding hyphens, numbers, or words like "official" to get something that is still available. There is nothing wrong with .com. It is simply full, and on its own it tells a visitor nothing about what you do.
What .dev Says Before You Even Open the Page
Google Registry opened .dev to the public in early 2019, after an Early Access period that began on February 19 of that year. Google described it as a home "dedicated to developers and technology." Big names use it too: GitHub has github.dev, Slack has slack.dev, and Codecademy has codecademy.dev.
This website exists to show the software I build, mainly ALTOS and its two subsystems for local treasuries. The site itself is written in Python. So .dev is an honest label. In four letters it tells you what kind of work you will find here.
Still, I should be clear about who I am. I am not a full-time developer. I work in the treasury service, and that is where my career is. Writing software is not part of my official duties. I do it on my own time because I have seen, from the inside, how much paperwork a local treasury carries, and I believe our offices deserve better tools. The .dev marks this website as the place where that side of my work lives: a treasury worker who builds.
Secure by Default: The Part I Like Most
This is my main reason, and it needs a short explanation. When your phone opens a website, the information passes through many machines along the way: your Wi-Fi router, your internet provider, and others you never see. With plain HTTP, that information travels like a postcard. Anyone who handles it can read it, and can even change it.
HTTPS puts the postcard inside a sealed envelope. The message is encrypted, so others cannot read it, and it is checked on arrival, so nobody can quietly change it along the way. The small padlock beside the address in your browser means HTTPS is on.
Most websites can choose whether to use HTTPS. A .dev website cannot. Google's own announcement says .dev is "secure by default because it requires HTTPS" for every .dev website. There is no switch to turn it off.
How is that enforced? Through a list called the HSTS preload list. HSTS stands for HTTP Strict Transport Security. It is a rule that tells the browser: only ever talk to this website over HTTPS. Normally, each website owner has to apply to be put on that list, one site at a time. With .dev, the whole TLD is on the list. Chrome added .dev in version 63, in December 2017, together with .app, .page, .foo and .chrome. According to the people who run the list, Firefox, Safari and Edge also keep preload lists based on Chrome's.
What does this mean for you as a visitor? If you type http://aumahinay.dev, your browser does not even try the unsafe way. It goes straight to the secure version. And if a .dev website ever has a problem with its security certificate, the browser shows a warning and does not let visitors click past it to an unprotected connection.
Safety should be the starting point, not a setting you have to remember to switch on.
In treasury work, we do not leave the cash box open and hope people behave. It is locked by default, and every opening is recorded. ALTOS follows the same idea: receipts are numbered in strict sequence, and the activity log is chained so that tampering shows. The .dev domain applies that same thinking to a website.
To be fair, a .com website can be just as secure if its owner sets up HTTPS properly, and most good websites do. The difference is that with .dev, I cannot forget, and nobody can switch it off by mistake. The rule is built into the address itself.
But This Site Has No Passwords. Why Care?
It is true that this website has no login, no forms and no payments. But HTTPS protects more than passwords. It also protects what you read. On public Wi-Fi, an unprotected page can be altered on its way to you: an ad slipped in, or a link swapped for a bad one. Google's announcement mentions exactly this, protection from ad malware and from tracking code injected by internet providers.
I write here about public finance, accountability and the law. When you read a post on this site, I want you to be sure that the words on your screen are the words I wrote.
The Catch: You Need a Certificate
Because HTTPS is required, every .dev website needs an SSL/TLS certificate, a kind of digital ID that proves the website really is who it claims to be. Years ago, getting one cost money and paperwork. Today many hosts do it for free and automatically. My web host set up the certificate for this site, and all I had to do was connect the domain.
You can check this yourself on any website. Tap or click the small icon at the left of the address bar. Your browser will tell you whether the connection is secure, and it can show you the certificate: who it was issued to, who issued it, and until when it is valid. It is a good habit, especially before you type a password or pay for anything online.
Will .dev Hurt My Google Ranking?
This was my biggest worry, so I checked. Google's answer is clear: "Overall, our systems treat new gTLDs like other gTLDs (like .com and .org)." It also says that keywords in a TLD "do not give any advantage or disadvantage in search." In other words, .dev neither helps nor hurts. What matters is useful content, written for people.
Why aumahinay and Not Just mahinay
My first plan was mahinay.dev. In the end I chose aumahinay.dev. The "au" comes from my initials: A for my first name, Ambrosio, and U for my mother's surname, which, as is the custom in the Philippines, I carry as my middle name. The name is also close to the one I already use for my email and my GitHub account, so people see one consistent name wherever they find my work.
The Honest Downsides
No choice is perfect. Some people type .com out of habit, so when I share the address I spell it out: aumahinay dot dev.
There is also a small lesson from history. Before 2019, many programmers used made-up .dev addresses for testing websites on their own computers. When browsers began requiring HTTPS for .dev, those setups suddenly stopped working. The lesson for any builder: do not borrow a name that belongs to someone else, even when it seems unused.
If You Are Choosing Your Own Address
Make it about you or your work. Your name, or a short name for what you do, ages better than a clever word.
Keep it short and easy to say. If you have to spell it twice over the phone, it is too long.
Pick a TLD that tells the truth. .com for a business, .org for an organization, .ph to show you are in the Philippines, and .dev for software and technology. A personal site should never look like an official one; .gov.ph is for government offices.
Do not use someone else's name or brand. An address that looks like a company or an office you do not represent invites confusion, and sometimes legal trouble.
Use HTTPS everywhere. With .dev you have no choice. With any other TLD, make it your choice.
A domain name is only a few letters, but it speaks before your website does. Mine says: this is where I build, and it is locked by default. That is what I want people to expect from me, both in software and in the treasury service.
Sources
Eric Lawrence, "Strict-Transport-Security for *.dev, *.app and more"
Verisign, Domain Name Industry Brief, Q2 2026
Google Search Central, "Google's handling of new top level domains" (2015)