ICANN opens floodgates to new domains

On Jan. 12, the Internet opens a new chapter as organizations around the world begin applying for new domain name extensions. It's the most significant change to the Internet's naming system in well over a decade, reports Carolyn Duffy Marsan at Network World.  

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers will accept applications for the new generic top-level domains until April 12. There are 280 domains in use today, including country codes, and .com represents about 100 million out of the 220 million registered domain names. New domains could include extensions that represent specific companies and brands.

"The innovation is going to be in the name itself and the way it gets used from a marketing standpoint," said Roland LaPlante, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for Afilias, which runs the .info, .org and 13 other domain name registries. "Most of the applications are pretty plain vanilla technically. There will be some eligibility verification that will be interesting and useful. There will be some registry services that will be offered that aren't available today. But most of the new registries will operate the way they do today."

Nobody is sure how many new domains will result from the new applications, but some experts anticipate thousands. It could mean a significant learning curve for Internet users. "I'm thinking that the number of new domains will be in the 1,000 range...So we're talking about a 5X increase in the number of available domains," LaPlante said. "I think the biggest change is in adjusting consumer behavior and generating trust in these new TLDs."

Twice before, ICANN has attempted to extend the number of Internet domains, Duffy Marsan reports. In 2000, it added .info and .biz along with five other extensions. In 2004, it added another eight, including .jobs and .asia. But as Marsan Duffy notes, these haven't been a flying success.

This latest--not to mention controversial--domain name endeavor by ICANN will likely be seen most starkly in internationalized domain names, which will have non-English language characters in the extension. There has been considerable concern raised by U.S. corporations that it may become increasingly costly to defend their own domain names as the pool grows.

Corporations that wish to apply for a domain name extension using their own trademarks have to file a lot of paperwork in addition to a $185,000 application fee. IBM and Deloitte reportedly are planning to apply, as well as banks, retailers and other companies.

For more:
- read this FierceGovernmentIT article
- see Carolyn Duffy Marsan's article at Network World

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