The .COM domain has always been international in nature, not a country domain restricted to the US. See the extract of RFC 1591 below. Or have I missed something?
It is fairly clear that .US is for US companies, .COM is international commercial, and the .GOV and .MIL domains are restricted to the US.
"Each of the generic TLDs was created for a general category of organizations. The country code domains (for example, FR, NL, KR, US) are each organized by an administrator for that country. ... These administrators are performing a public service on behalf of the Internet community. Descriptions of the generic domains and the US country domain follow.
Of these generic domains, five are international in nature, and two are restricted to use by entities in the United States.
World Wide Generic Domains:
COM - This domain is intended for commercial entities, that is companies. ...
EDU - This domain was originally intended for all educational institutions. ...
NET - This domain is intended to hold only the computers of network providers, that is the NIC and NOC computers, the administrative computers, and the network node computers. ...
ORG - This domain is intended as the miscellaneous TLD for organizations that didn't fit anywhere else. ...
INT - This domain is for organizations established by international treaties, or international databases.
United States Only Generic Domains:
GOV - This domain was originally intended for any kind of government office or agency. More recently a decision was taken to register only agencies of the US Federal government in this domain. State and local agencies are registered in the country domains (see US Domain, below).
MIL - This domain is used by the US military.
Example country code Domain:
US - As an example of a country domain, the US domain provides for the registration of all kinds of entities in the United States on the basis of political geography, ..."
.edu domains are only granted to organisations accredited as providing higher education by the U.S. Department of Education.
Wikipedia claims that it started out as a general TLD, as did .gov and .mil, and only became attached to the Dep. Education in 2001, which I am sure is wrong - I'm sure they adminstered it earlier.
It is fairly clear that .US is for US companies, .COM is international commercial, and the .GOV and .MIL domains are restricted to the US.
RFC 1591 (March 1994) http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1591.txt
"Each of the generic TLDs was created for a general category of organizations. The country code domains (for example, FR, NL, KR, US) are each organized by an administrator for that country. ... These administrators are performing a public service on behalf of the Internet community. Descriptions of the generic domains and the US country domain follow.
Of these generic domains, five are international in nature, and two are restricted to use by entities in the United States.
World Wide Generic Domains:
COM - This domain is intended for commercial entities, that is companies. ...
EDU - This domain was originally intended for all educational institutions. ...
NET - This domain is intended to hold only the computers of network providers, that is the NIC and NOC computers, the administrative computers, and the network node computers. ...
ORG - This domain is intended as the miscellaneous TLD for organizations that didn't fit anywhere else. ...
INT - This domain is for organizations established by international treaties, or international databases.
United States Only Generic Domains:
GOV - This domain was originally intended for any kind of government office or agency. More recently a decision was taken to register only agencies of the US Federal government in this domain. State and local agencies are registered in the country domains (see US Domain, below).
MIL - This domain is used by the US military.
Example country code Domain:
US - As an example of a country domain, the US domain provides for the registration of all kinds of entities in the United States on the basis of political geography, ..."