Abstract :
ICANN has recently announced an "open season" on top-level domains, to start some time in 2009. This will dramatically expand the namespace for Internet domain names, and will allow cities, industries, and companies to register specific top-level domains for themselves. What effect will that have on the companies involved, and on the Internet users? In this column, the author explores that question and gives his opinion on the answer.
Keywords :
Internet; Internet domain names; top-level domains; Cities and towns; Domain Name System; ISO; Sorting; Standards organizations; Terminology; US Government; Web and internet services; Web sites; FQDN; ICANN; Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers; TLD; hierarchy; registries; second-level domain; subdomain; top-level domain;
