First New Generic Top Level Domains Opening

umdenken points out that the first batch of generic Top Level Domains will go live within the next several days, including .bike, .guru, .clothing, .holdings, .singles, .plumbing, and .ventures. (Early access began Jan. 29th.) ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade says there is currently huge demand for ICANN to reopen their program to let companies run their own gTLD. He said, "Many, many brands and many, many communities didn't know about the GTLD program. I get significant amounts of questions about when can we open the next round, because certainly there is a bit of angst that if Canon [who applied for the .canon gTLD] uses this to do an incredible mass customization campaign to win users to their product, I'm sure the brand next to them will say "Why aren't we doing this?" So I do believe this will snowball. But many will find a .com or whatever they have now will be good enough, and I believe that one excludes the other." He also said the $185,000 price tag to do so is likely to drop.

Comments

Re:why do we need generic top level domains anyway

[mysidia]

why do we even have .com or .org or .net on the end.

To identify which registration authority the domain name was created under.

Also... to distinguish domain names from just any other name.

I'll give you an example: "BOOKS"

No one entity should get a monopoly on the name BOOKS. If you type BOOKS into your browser address bar; you should not be summarily redirected to whoever happened to get there first ---- logically, you would be presented search results based on relevance.

The authority system allows, there to be a BOOKS.COM under the Commercial registration authority... that might be a book store, Or an accounting vendor....

There can be a BOOKS.ORG, under the non-profit organization reg. authority ---- that might, for example, be a library-related organization.

Then there can be a BOOKS.EDU under the education reg. authority --- that domain might, for example, be an institution of higher learning that specializes in the library sciences or authorship/book writing.

Such domains a .INFO; were added later, and Don't really fit logically in the original DNS system.

Re:For all the USA haters on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

The root of the DNS zone is still handled by the US government. ICANN has a consultative role and suggests modifications, US can still veto any suggestion and can nuke a whole country out of DNS if they so chose.

"Inventing the Internet" gives you the same rights over the international Internet as "inventing the English language" gives over English speakers. If not for the DoD project, the computers of the world would have been connected using a descendant of Minitel, BBSes etc. It would have been completely different at the protocol level and completely similar at it's uses and porn availability.

Re:Just saying...

[mikael]

Now you can make your domain name look like a USENET discussion forum:

alt.fashion.goth.clothing
comp.languages.cobol.programmer.guru