ICANN Votes to Expand Available Web Domain Suffixes

A recent BBC News article reports that the global internet body ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has voted to allow the creation of new website domain suffixes. The new decision will expand the possibilities for website suffixes beyond the usual .com, .org, .net, and 20 or so other standard suffixes (not including country domain names like .uk and .ca).

This is pretty big news, as the ruling now allows for just about any word to end the domain name of a website. Large corporations will now be able to name their sites with .ford, .warnerbros, or .google, for example. Businesses using .com may soon be a thing of the past—custom net suffixes take product branding to a whole new level.

I’ve always thought that suffixes on websites were sort of arbitrary. Sure, .edu for educational institutions and .gov for government make sense, but .com, .net and others have become so widely used (and seemingly unnecessary) that they might as well be dot-nothing. After all, if you’re looking for Apple, for example, you can just type “apple” into your web browser’s address bar, and you’ll find Apple, no problem. But, can every Cheeseball Charlie on the block now get his own suffix to tell the world of his awesomeness?

Not exactly. To keep the riffraff out and make sure that the .what-have-yous are for legitimate businesses and the like, ICANN has set very high standards for who will be allowed to use customized dot-names. There’s a $185,000 fee just to apply, and a lengthy application process to ensure that the entity asking for the custom web suffix has not just the right to use the name (so Pepsi can’t buy .coke), but also the technology to support it.

You can read the full BBC article here for more info. What do you think of this new .development? Will it revolutionize the web like nothing has since good ol’ .com? Or will it be a new pain in the neck that just means you have to redo your “Favorites” folder?

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