It is now official. Big changes are coming the Internet’s way, after ICANN the Internet’s regulatory authority has decided in a unanimous vote to expand the number of top-level domains (.com, .net, .org etc) to a potentially unlimited number. Among other decisions in a Paris, France meeting, is that the ICANN will consider and implement new top-level domains, which might be better suited for companies and individuals in describing what their websites stand for.
Imagine in the near future, you can have a website address in the form of www.john.doe, www.mary.lovescats, www.government.office and www.summer.vacation.
Whether this will all lead to confusion or it will aid in the direction of an even more semantic web, it remains to be seen. Trademarks on web addresses will be hard to keep up with though. With the 21 top-level domains currently available, many companies choose to register their name with all in order to avoid consumer confusion and fraud. If there where hundreds of possible web address suffixes, that’d be a nearly impossible task to handle.
Among other decisions reached by the ICANN board in Paris, is the future support of other languages in web address extensions. Presently, you can only use 37 roman characters in a web address. Support for Asian, Arabic, Eastern European and Greek scripts should become available once that decision goes into implementation.
According to the ICANN this is the “biggest expansion to Internet in forty years”, and with a constantly growing demand for more websites and domain names, a much awaited for expansion by many.
