In what has been described as the ‘biggest change for the online world in years’ the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) has voted to allow the creation of new suffixes. Thus, Internet address names will be able to end with any word and in any language. According to Icann’s president and chief executive officer, “Icann has opened the Internet’s addressing system to the limitless possibilities of the human imagination”.
Therefore, Internet users can start to expect seeing several new generic top-level domain names (gTLDs) such as .bbc, .apple, .fifa and so on in addition to the existing 22 gTLDs and 250 country-level domain names such as .ng and .uk in the near future.
It will cost around $185,000 to apply for the suffixes, and corporations and cities (which are expected to be among the first) would need to show that they have a legitimate claim to the name they intend on buying. Applications to Icann are not expected to begin until (12 January) 2012.
The vote, which is the biggest change since .com began 26 years ago, completes a 6-year negotiation process.
Talking Point
Do you agree with allowing the creation of new Internet suffixes and can you predict where this historic decision will take us?
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Emma from Craigslist pvas
June 21, 2011 at 2:56 pm
I cant see this really changing anything to be honest, for example why would a big company like apple go and buy apple.apple and spend $185,000 and also fill in the 360 pages app form when people already know were to find the apple website. I really dont think this will catch on, biggest waste of money ever.
leeanna
June 21, 2011 at 9:03 pm
I donno about this, i’m not sure if people will go for it if they don’t know what the long term effects of google on the domains will be…like how google will rate these overall
jesty
June 22, 2011 at 10:44 am
I’m not so sure about this one either… Like from what emma said.. it could be just a waste of money..
zyberfreakz
June 24, 2011 at 5:00 pm
it will be just a waste of a lot of money
reeha
June 25, 2011 at 10:54 pm
the prices are so high and this offer is only good for big business holders. however thanks for writing this useful post
Nawaz
June 28, 2011 at 12:18 pm
This is another way to enhance online introduction but it is very expensive.
Zaman
June 29, 2011 at 2:47 pm
Nice but it seems it won’t get friendship with users’ pocket budget, yes it wont, if it is, so it would have very shorter social gathering. It would do much a lot if the prizes would have been pull downed to be really paid for.
Admin
July 1, 2011 at 10:43 pm
It appears most people are only concerned about the costs. So can we assume it would have been a great idea if it were cheap?
Raymund
July 22, 2011 at 3:14 am
I think more suffixes would be nice as long as there is strict regulation in their creation.
ibyang
July 23, 2011 at 7:01 am
Hello,
Don’t know yet the exact benefits for this idea. It can be so expensive and anyone can be discouraged in buying suffixes. Rich companies or cities can afford it but what about the others. Anyway, new things are always worth the try. Who knows, this can be a great way to broaden the possibilities of the internet.
Regards,
Ibyang
Sandra
September 4, 2011 at 3:39 pm
I think it will be a lot more confusing, especially for older generations.
And why and to whom do you pay the $185.000?