By next spring, businesses and other organizations will be able to apply for any top-level domain they can possibly think of, like arstechnica.awesome or google.thegoogle. Joking aside, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) voted today in Paris on a measure that significantly expands the scope of generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs), allowing organizations to apply for almost any domain suffix they can dream up.
Up until now, the rules for TLDs are rather strict and tightly regulated. Beyond the typical .com, .net, and .org, there are only a handful of others TLDs that IP addresses can be registered under, including .tv, .biz, .mobi, and .us. Thanks to today's unanimous vote, however, the list of possible options will skyrocket. "What we're effectively doing is opening up huge amounts of online real estate," ICANN president and CEO Paul Twomey told the Wall Street Journal before the vote took place.
This has the potential to dramatically change the way we use the Internet. One of the primary reasons for the name to number system was to reduce complexity. This brings the complexity right back. At the moment one had a reasonable expectation that the site you wanted ended in .co.za, or .com. Then maybe you could try .net, .org, or .org.za. Now .msn, .mac, .apple, .ipod, .sex,, even .etc are all possibilities. Looks like Google is about to become even more of a friend.
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