Archive for July 25th, 2008

ICANN new gTLD system will brandize the internet

I’ve yet to comment on ICANN’s new plan for the internet’s so called “top level domain names” (.com, .net, etc’), and I think a very important future aspect of it was overlooked by most critics.

ICANN are planning to open up the process for adding new top level domains1 to the point where anyone can request to register new top level domains – even in a non-latin script.

Many commenters agree that implementing this suggestion would cause an explosion in the available and used top level domains, and as a result also the number of actual domains registered, which can also be a bad thing – for example, domains named after common file extensions (Firefox.exe anyone?), for specific fringe interest groups or a top level domain per city (The .nyc domain for New York City seems to be the most coordinated).

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  1. following the previous expansion of list of generic top level domains where 7 new top level domains were introduced []