the u.s. is the only country that has a government-specific top-level domain in addition to its cctld. other countries typically use a second-level domain for this purpose, e.g., .gov.au for australia, .gov.uk for the united kingdom, .gc.ca for canada, and .gouv.fr for france. since the united states controls the .gov top level domain, it would be impossible for another country to create a domain ending in .gov, for example, .jp.gov.