.confusion: ICANN opens up Pandora's Box of new TLDs

By Jacqui Cheng | Published: June 26, 2008 - 12:11PM CT

By next spring, businesses and other organizations will be able to apply for any top level domain they can possibly think of, like arstechnica.awesome or google.thegoogle. Joking aside, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) voted today in Paris on a measure that significantly expands the scope of generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs), allowing organizations to apply for almost any domain suffix they can dream up.

Up until now, the rules for TLDs are rather strict and tightly regulated. Beyond the typical .com, .net, and .org, there are only a handful of others TLDs that IP addresses can be registered under, including .tv, .biz, .mobi, and .us. Thanks to today's unanimous vote, however, the list of possible options will skyrocket. "What we're effectively doing is opening up huge amounts of online real estate," ICANN president and CEO Paul Twomey told the Wall Street Journal before the vote took place.

Originally from http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080626-confusion-icann-opens-up-pandoras-box-of-new-tlds.html