NEW YORK --In Britain, ".uk" is the suffix of choice for Internet addresses. In Germany, it's ".de."

In the United States, however, ".us" is the forgotten stepchild. Web sites tend to prefer ".com," which was designed as a global moniker for commercial sites but is heavily populated by Americans.

Two companies prominent in the domain name industry want to challenge that notion.

Believing they could do a better job marketing the country's own domain name, ".info" operator Afilias Ltd. and registration company GoDaddy.com Inc. are now trying to take over the operations of ".us." They'll face a challenge from its current operator and possibly others. The U.S. government could rule as early as this month.

NeuStar Inc. won the ".us" contract in 2001. At the time, addresses ending in ".us" were confusing to register and use. With the government's approval, NeuStar permitted sites to obtain non-geographic addresses such as "clothingstore.us," rather than the more cumbersome "clothingstore.los-angeles.ca.us."

The domain grew in usage to 1.3 million today, up from about 17,000 in 2001.

But that's still a fraction of the 11 million for ".de" and 6 million each for ".uk" and China's ".cn." Even the Netherland's ".nl" has about twice as many names.

"Now is the time to change (the '.us') leadership and put it on a growth track," said Roland LaPlante, chief marketing officer for Dublin, Ireland-based Afilias, whose U.S. arm is bidding with GoDaddy for the ".us" contract when the current one expires Oct. 25.

NeuStar won't step aside without a fight. It is seeking a contract renewal and believes quality rather than quantity is what counts. In a statement, the company said it has demonstrated its ability to operate ".us" with "the highest levels of security, stability, technical expertise and policy compliance."

It is not known if other companies have submitted bids. The Commerce Department did not return calls for comment.