ICANN to allow new top level domains
Posted Monday, June 30th, 2008 at 10:22 am by John Brian (91 posts)
Is the internet 
running out of domain names? Well, not really, but it could be argued that we’re running out of easily remembered and typed names. The combination of lower entry costs for even the smallest businesses to get online with the proliferation of microsites and redirects has led to a need for new real estate. The first wave of this was an attempt to make more use out of shared suffixes like .us, .info, and, of course, .tv (which provides a significant portion of the GNP of the nation of Tuvalu), but these never really caught on – people have been trained to look for the .com to identify something as a web site.
So ICANN is trying something new: custom top level domains. In about a year, they’ll be opening up the auction block for companies and organizations to set up their own top level domain. So if apple.com is already taken by the computer magnate, a business that sells the fruit could make a bid on the .apple suffix, allowing them to create easy to remember addresses like red.apple. ICANN has indicated that in the initial rush for top level domains, they’re going to stop speculators by taking intellectual property into account. And because top level domains can host an infinate number of domains within them, fruit.apple and iphone.apple can coexist peacefully.
Should your non-profit be considering a purchase of one of these new top level domains when they open up? Not immediately – ICANN is saying that the registration fee will be between $100,000 and $500,000, and no matter how unrecognizable your current URL is, it’s probably not the best use of your web dollars to switch. Look for these costs to go down in time – someone will likely sweep through the buy most of common names that are hard to trademark (.international, .foundation, and .association come to mind) and will be selling space there at a much lower rate.
Unfortunately, even companies that move on to their own top-level domains are unlikely to relinquish control over their current holdings, so those domains that they’re keeping from you probably won’t open up – they’re just too cheap to hold on to. But it remains to be seen if this new convention will catch on – how long did it take before people could start dropping the www from their domain name in publications?
