Growing Pains: New Domain Name Options to be Rolled Out

When British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee laid the framework for what would become the World Wide Web in 1990,he probably had no idea how much of a staple his technology would become.  Now, it’s possible for almost anyone to create and maintain a site, even with its own domain name.  Trouble can arise, though, when an aspiring webmaster tries to pick out a name as many have already been spoken for.

But that could soon change. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the worldwide organization responsible for registering all domain names on the Web, is set to accept applications for new “global top level domains” (gTLD’s) for three months, beginning on Jan. 12.

A top-level domain (TLD) is the last part of a domain name, which identifies the type of Web site and/or its country of origin.  When Berners-Lee helped launch the Web, he envisioned four basic TLD’s: .com, .net, .org and .edu, along with two-letter codes for each country (e.g. .us for the US and .es for Spain).  As people registered new sites, the number of available addresses for each TLD decreased rapidly.  More recently, additional TLDs such as .info and .biz have been launched to help keep up with demand.

ICANN’s latest move will allow interested parties(who can part with the required $185,000 ICANN filing fee) to apply for whatever TLDs they choose, with a few restrictions.  For example, any new TLD must be different enough from existing ones to prevent unnecessary confusion.

According to Domain Tools, over 130 million domain names are currently active across six of the most popular TLDs (.com, .net, .org, .info, .biz and .us).  Meanwhile, Verisign reports that more than 80 million domain names were active across all other TLDs at the end of September 2011.  ICANN’s latest decision to allow for even more site naming options, then, appears to be a good thing.

Share your thoughts: What new gTLDs do you think people will snatch up this time around?  What could this mean for marketing and other aspects of business?  Do you think we’ll see .air for airlines, .bank for finance, and the like?

Luke can be reached at luke.jensen1981(at)gmail.com

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