> The registrar for .us (GoDaddy) is in fact the “root dns for .us”

“root DNS” has a very specific meaning, and you’ve misused it again.

Root DNS means ‘.’ and only ‘.’ There is no other “root”. That’s why it’s called “root” to be unambiguous.

In fact, in recent history, the root name servers use their own domain for convenient forward DNS resolution: ‘root-servers.net’ GoDaddy doesn’t run this either... Surprise, surprise!

> Your company doesn't run the Internet

Yeah well as a fragment, the statement makes sense, more or less, because there’s no “term of art” being abused there in your reductio ad absurdum.

Indeed you can run your own private root DNS, if you don’t want to interact with the real Internet, but your private roots are different from your private/hidden/split-horizon TLD. Another thing GoDaddy isn’t running. Did you know that GoDaddy doesn’t run news.ycombinator.com? Not even a subsidiary!

GoDaddy doesn’t run any “root DNS”, and they never have: period, full stop. [Pun intended]

The whole point of a tree is that every node is the root of its subtree.