ICANN’t Believe it

Hold onto your hat! The world of top level domains is about to explode. Oh yeah, the old .com, .edu, .org and 10 others will remain. But if the Paris round recommendations are approved soon we will have “.disney”, “.apple”, “.nyc”, etc. If you can pony up the $100k for the registration you too could have one. Heck there might even be a “.gates” domain, he can afford it. –

None of the new names is likely to dethrone “.com” as the world’s leader, and critics fear new suffixes will merely force companies and organizations to spend more money registering names such as “microsoft.paris” simply so others can’t. Legal battles are possible over common but trademarked names like “.apple.”

The other proposal before ICANN would permit addresses entirely in non-English characters for the first time. Specific countries would be put on a “fast track” to receive the equivalent of their two-letter country code, such as Bulgaria’s “.bg,” in a native language.

The ICANN board said it would seek public comment on the guidelines before its next major meeting in November.

Demand for such names has been increasing around the world as Internet usage expands to people who cannot speak English or easily type English characters. Addresses partly in foreign languages are sometimes possible today, but the suffix has been limited to 37 characters: a-z, 0-9 and the hyphen.

It had to happen. It was getting crowded as it was. I would have preferred a little more structure however. Having to know essentially a fully qualified domain name for a user to hit a web site might become a daunting task. The other observation is that this will be a corporate phenomenon. With a $100k entry fee it is going to be the retailing giants that go for this. The odd question not answered? If Coca-Cola buys a TLD, “.cola” does it mean they have to give up the .com address they are using?

More at Wired.