You’re correct.

.co is the country code for Colombia, but it is also universally associated with “company,” “commerce” and “corporation,” hence it holds great commercial value. Other country specific domains have successfully crossed over, for example .tv for the islands of Tuvalu, which has now become globally recognised as a site for rich content/multi-media websites. So, to answer your question, .co registrations are open globally giving, even small businesses, the chance to get the name they always wanted.

Google has said that the .co domain is still assigned to Colombia at the moment, but that would soon change. They are quoted in saying that they “will rank .co domains appropriately if the content is globally targeted. Webmasters will soon have the functionality to be able to specify this by using the geotargeting options in Google Webmaster Tools.”