applicationvndgoogleearthkmlxml

application/vnd. is a category in the Internet media type registry used for vendor-specific formats. The “vnd” prefix signals that the subtype is defined by a vendor or group rather than a broadly standardized public type. These MIME types are registered with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) to prevent conflicts and to point to the official specification describing the data format and its handling. They are commonly used for proprietary formats as well as widely adopted standards created by software vendors.

The subtype naming in the vnd namespace reflects the issuing vendor’s naming conventions, and each entry includes a description and a reference to the governing specification. Applications, servers, and libraries use these types to decide how to process a file, how to display it, or which program should open it.

Notable examples include: application/vnd.ms-excel for Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, and application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet for the modern OpenXML spreadsheet format. For word processing and presentation, examples include application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document and application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.presentation. Apple’s iWork suite uses application/vnd.apple.pages, application/vnd.apple.numbers, and application/vnd.apple.keynote for Pages, Numbers, and Keynote documents, respectively.

In practice, vendor-specific types help software identify formats independent of file extensions, but many environments still rely on extensions or content sniffing. IANA maintains the official registry, which promotes interoperability and reduces ambiguity when exchanging data between systems.