ICANN on Thursday moved closer to allowing a range of customized domains to become part of the Internet's addressing system. Web addresses like ABCCompany.dealer, though, won't happen overnight.
The Board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the organization responsible for coordinating domain names, still has to approve a final version of the implementation plan. ICANN expects to see the new names come online in early 2009.
The proposal paves the way to expand domain-name choice and opportunity, according to Dr. Paul Twomey, president and CEO of ICANN. But not everybody is convinced that more domain suffixes will benefit businesses.
"The potential here is huge. It represents a whole new way for people to express themselves on the Net," Twomey said. "It's a massive increase in the 'real estate' of the Internet."
Broadening the Possibilities
Currently, users have a limited range of 21 top-level domains to choose from -- familiar names like .com, .org, .info. The proposal allows applicants for new names to self-select their domain name so choices are most appropriate for their customers or potentially the most marketable. The present system only supports 37 Roman characters.
ICANN expects applicants will apply for targeted community strings such as .travel for the travel industry and .cat for the Catalan community, as well as generic strings like .brandname or .yournamehere. There are already consortiums seeking to establish city-based top-level domains, like .nyc (for New York City), .berlin and .paris.
"One of the most exciting prospects before us is that the expanding system is also being planned to support extensions in the languages of the world," ICANN Chairman Peter Dengate Thrush said. "This is going to be very important for the future of the Internet in Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Russia."
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