The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has recently relaxed web naming rules after an unanimous board voting.
ICANN is a non-profit organization established in 1998. The internet watchdog is responsible to regulate the internet, regulate its integrity and set the rules for domain names registration.
Previously, domain names and especially top level domains (TLD) are tightly regulated and guarded, no offensive or trademarked domain names are allowed and only TLDs (besides the traditional .com, .org and .net) which add value can be registered.
In the recent ICANN board meeting, several key issues regarding web naming conventions have finally been resolved. This could effectively spell a new direction in the development of the internet. The decisions taken during the meeting are:
- Domain names with combination of numbers, letters and non-Latin characters will be allowed.
- Extended top level domains (TLD) such as .kids, .toys, .news and .cars could be registered.
These decisions would be welcomed by web vendors, developers and users alike. Most good English domain names have been taken and due to the restrictions placed by ICANN, many companies have resorted to weird sounding domain names. Now it is possible for web developers to grab hold of suitable domain names in other languages and top level domains. However, the opportunity would not come cheap, ICANN has hinted at a possible starting price of $100,000 for the registration of extended domain names.
Apparently, this move does not only excite the money-minded opportunists, but also patriots like Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, who would like to see the use of languages other than English in the naming of web domains.
The year 2009 will be a year to watch out for, ICANN expects that companies and individuals will be able to register new domains under the new ruling in the first quarter of the year.
BobbyT is a 23-year-old blogger, freelance writer and internet marketeer wannabe. You can visit his blog at http://bobbytoat.blogspot.com
Seems to me opening up the domain names will only serve to confuse users. Right now most sites are accessible via the .com extension. I can imagine many sites in the future losing users because they couldn’t remember the name and extension of the site. With the high price tag, I see the new domain extensions being almost exclusively used by big companies to secure their brand and just redirect traffic to their main .com name.
In other words, I’m not rushing out to pick up adam.pieniazek anytime soon!
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I can see Microsoft and Google buying their own TLD so we could be seeing vwxyz.google or abcd.microsoft pretty soon. This will put a new look to the web.
The Russians are right for wanting their own alphabet, but they had better not exect a lot of foreign visitors. Does your keyboard have the Cyrillic character setup? Mine does because I have a blog in Russia, but most people using the internet do not.