Is .Sex the New .Com? By RUSSELL GOLDMAN, ABC news (June 26)
Here comes chaos. Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is expected to allow for nearly anything as the top level generic domain name. These have been limited to .com, .edu and about 8 others.
"Trademarked names would be bought and owned by those companies, but more generic domains like .sex or .car would be auctioned, opening the likelihood of a bidding war."
The other change to allow non-Roman characters in an Internet address is more understandable, although the consequences would be like the "confusion of tongues" after Babel . "Currently, only the letters of the English-language alphabet can be used in a URL, but the new policy would allow native speakers of languages like Arabic, Chinese and Thai to create Web addresses in their own languages."
The free-for-all in the top level domain will make evaluating and locating sites more difficult for searchers who have relied on .org, .net, .edu, .gov, and even .com to mean something.
The article mentions that a company could apply for a distinct tld - .ebay, .abc - but why - when the company name is already in the company domain name?
Posted by Gwen at June 26, 2008 11:42 AM