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Ask Ubuntu, for example has ubuntu.stackexchange.com redirect. Why does Stack Overflow have no such redirects?

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  • 5
    It is part of the original trio (Super User, Stack Overflow, Server Fault) that predates Stack Exchange as a whole
    – Anthony Pham
    Mar 14, 2017 at 16:37
  • Actually asking for that.
    – Erkin Alp Güney
    Mar 14, 2017 at 16:58
  • Cause we're speshul
    – Bart
    Mar 14, 2017 at 18:12
  • Because then SO will claim for having stackexchange.stackoverflow.com! (I mean SO, the company is more popular then SE) :p
    – Pandya
    Mar 17, 2017 at 13:41
  • They are the same company.
    – Erkin Alp Güney
    Mar 17, 2017 at 14:11
  • @ErkinAlpGüney: Why do you need it? Just go to stackoverflow.com like everybody else.
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Jul 11, 2017 at 19:21
  • Regularity and symmetry.
    – Erkin Alp Güney
    Jul 15, 2017 at 19:31

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Why does Stack Overflow have no such redirects?

Because it predates Stack Exchange.

By the time the idea of Stack Exchange came up, Stack Overflow was well established - in fact, the original idea was to have a bunch of sites each with their own name, which is why some of the earliest sites in the network have their own names (Stack Overflow, Server Fault, Super User). However that became untenable.

You can ask why we didn't go back then, and change the names of the sites to be <sitename>.stackexchange.com - the reason would be that these sites already had an identity, and we didn't want to disrupt that.

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Oded described the "why it doesn't exist" part, but to respond to the feature request... we're not going to add a redirect just for the sake of having it. It's a maintenance cost (albeit a minor one) that has little to no practical benefit. At this point in Stack Overflow's history, I don't see why anyone would think to go to stackoverflow.stackexchange.com instead of stackoverflow.com itself.

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  • I believe programmers, crawlers, and people with some form of complulsion for order would use (if not demand) the *.stackexchange.com pattern. Having the original domains are just more readable and writable.
    – ShooShoSha
    Sep 8, 2017 at 20:50
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    @ShooShoSha Dunno about the rest, but programmers and crawlers target stackoverflow.com just fine. :)
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Sep 8, 2017 at 20:51

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