According to ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the internet is about to be changed forever, and they’re not referring to HTML5. ICANN is the body that regulates internet web site naming conventions, such as domain name suffixes (or top level domains) .com, .net, .xxx, and so on, and today they opened registration for new top level domain names.
There have always been many domain names to choose from. We’ve had access to the commonly used domain names that are supposed to be descriptive such as .org for non-profit organizations and .gov for governments, and we’ve had access to country based domain names such as .us for the United States and .ca for Canada. As of today, personalized, or maybe we should say vanity, domain names are available for registration. In a year or so, you might be going to websites with URLs such as ipad.apple or weather.chicago, but don’t expect everyone to jump on the vanity domain name bandwagon. Registration costs $185,000.
Right now, there are 22 domain names that don’t represent a country, another 252 that do, and registration for a domain name rarely costs more than $20. It will be interesting to see who is willing to pay such an large amount for a new domain name, and will websites like blogspot.com and tumblr.com become obsolete? If someone registers .blog, they could gain an effective monopoly on blog sites.
Another interesting feature is the inclusion of other languages. Until today, website domains were only available within the confines of the Latin alphabet. Now, any language can be used.
The best part about all of this is simply that the internet is continuing to evolve. Perhaps ICANN is correct when they say that these new top level domain names will change the internet forever, and perhaps that’s a bit of an overstatement, but at the very least the internet is improving. Take HTML5 for example, it has already improved browser-based software by eliminating the need for 3rd party software, and we’re expecting much more from HTML5 over the next little while.
There are rarely giant leaps made in internet technology, although the internet itself was a giant leap, but we seem to consistently make small steps. What’s next? The elimination of www? We’re practically there already. It’s hard to find a site these days that requires www in front of the domain name. Go ahead and try.
Tags: Apple, call center software, domain, html5, icann, internet, ipad, www