In UK the top level domain .co.uk is quite popular. Many UK businesses run their websites on this TLD. Nominet, who runs the .uk domain name space released the .uk ending domain names in June 2014. If you own the .co.uk you can automatically register the .uk version too – but this right ends on 10 June 2019 according to businesscloud.co.uk.
If you’re curious to know whether your business qualify to get the free .uk version check this: the
According to Nominet.uk If you are an existing customer and own a unique .co.uk, .org.uk, .me.uk, .net.uk, .plc.uk or .ltd.uk, a .uk domain name may already have been reserved especially for you until 10 June 2019.
Once the above grace period expires, businesses will lose the chance to get their .uk domain which maybe not good from the branding perspective. But, its providing a free registration of .uk for the time now.
In a number of countries, .co is used as a second-level domain to mean “commercial” and domain registrants register second-level domains of the form .co.xx, where xx is the country code top level domain (e.g., .co.uk in the U.K. and .co.jp in Japan).
I never get it right. Also, it demands the users to remember the long extensions.