In On June 20, 2011, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which is the organisation that regulates the worlds domain names, approved a new set of guidelines that will potentially enable anyone to register any name they like, in almost any language, as a Web address. So you could potentially end your domain name with the name of your company. For instance, you could have a Web address such as: yourname.Tata, yourname.Reliance, or yourname.Infosys. This is clearly a landmark decision that will have a decisive impact on the nature of the Internet.
The process for registrations of new Web extensions is neither cheap, nor simple. New applications for addresses under the new rules will be accepted from Jan 2012 to April 2012. The first of the new domains could be online by late 2012. A government, a corporate or social entity, or an individual who wants to have an extension in their name must pay $185,000 with the application. The application form happens to be more than 300 pages long.
There are currently about 20 generic top-level domain names, like dot-org, and more than 200 country-code domain names, like .in for India. Nearly half of web addresses in the world flaunt a .com extension. The thing is that .com does not mean anything; in future the extension will have a meaning, it will be more creative. This will also have the effect of alleviating the shortage of dot-com Web addresses. Of course, lot of policy decisions need to be taken to ensure that the roll out of new domain names does not lead to disputes between governments, corporate entities and other institutions. It is possible that those seeking religious or political addresses could lead to tense situations.
For corporates, the idea of having an extension based on their corporate identity could mean a way of publicising their presence on the web and it could also turn out to be a form of enhanced security. Companies could register their brands as Web extensions and then lend out these extensions to their authorised dealers, this could be a means of curbing counterfeiting. It is possible that at some point in future we might have extensions like - .iphone, .ipad. .playbook, etc.
Meanwhile, the search engine giant Google has warned that the coming avalanche of domain names could create widespread confusion amongst users. How is a user going to guess where the real Citibank is? Is it at Citibank.com, at citi.bank. or is it at bank.Citibank! The infinite options that have suddenly become possible for Web extensions might also compound the registration process. These are issues that will have to be taken into account before the system gets rolled out.
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