About 15 years ago, there was a huge boom of internet companies springing up left and right with .com names. Many of them made millions of dollars from the domain names alone like pets.com or radio.com just to give you an example. However, in a couple of years, having a .com website will be a thing of the past.
ICANN, the people who lay down the internet rules, have just recently opened up the new domain gates to allow any domain name you want. Up to this day, most domain names have ended in 22 different choices from .com, .net, .gov, etc… But in a matter of a year or so, companies will be able to buy .Apple, or .Chevy, or any other website domain name you may like.
There is only one problem though, the so called generic top-level domains (gTLDs) will start off at a staggering $185,000 dollars, so the chances of you owning one ,or us having Tek.Bull are slim to none. However, ICANN expects about 500 corporations or so to sign up on the initial rush.
Additionally, you will be able to buy any domain name including domain names with special characters and foreign languages like Chinese and Cyrillic characters. So in a way this is going to be a good way to “un-flood” the internet for a while. At the same time, I suspect that the internet will begin to have a large number of “mystery” sites. like =].=[
ICANN says they will start accepting requests next January, and that you can expect the new domains to start rolling out late next year, let’s hope no one takes our name before we get the chance to get tek.bull. The only main problem I see with this is that no one is going to be able to find things, it’s hard enough trying to find a website on Google search, add a couple of characters into the name and now you open up billions of different possibilities. In a way .com, and .Net websites have limited the internet in such a way that most of us can remember sites that we like, when you start adding Chinese characters into the equation, you will have to start using CTRL+C and CTRL+V on the regular basis just to get to where you need to go. Check out the video release below for more information about this crazy, yet ‘historic’ internet move.
ICANN, via Los Angeles Times
