Web Addresses To Soon Change, With 2,000 Endings (Like .yolo, .swag, .sex) On The Way
The internet is about to get bigger – about 2,000 times bigger. 2,000 new extensions will be added to the current website endings. The endings we use now – .com, .net, etc. – will soon be competing with endings like .pizza and .youtube.
Companies have requested rights to new endings. Google spent nearly $10 million requesting 50 domain names, including .android, .youtube, and .lol.
Companies throughout the world have suggested almost 2,000 names.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers received 1,930 proposals for 1,410 different internet suffixes before the May 30 deadline.
911 of the proposals were from North America, while 675 came from Europe. The Asia-Pacific region gave 303 proposals. In regions where the internet is less frequently used, the proposal number was significantly lower. Latin America and the Caribbean proposed 24 suffixes, while Africa proposed 17.
ICANN plans to release details about the proposals at a news conference in London today at noon.
The full list of proposals is not yet available, although some companies have disclosed their suggestions.
Each suffix proposal cost $185,000.
The new suffixes will include non-English characters, including Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters. China has the world’s largest internet population. China is rumored to be creating an equivalent of ‘.com.’
116 proposals – 6% – included characters beyond the 26 English letters.
Many of the 1,930 proposals were duplicates – only 1,410 unique suffixes were proposed. Suffixes in contention are likely to include .bank and .secure.
Although ICANN is encouraging competing bidders to reach some sort of agreement, the organization will hold an auction for the suffixes if the parties cannot reach a compromise.
The list comes out on Wednesday and the public will have 60 days to comment on the proposals.
It will take at least a year or two for ICANN to approve the first of these new suffixes.
Before ICANN approves of a suffix, the organization needs to make sure that there is a financial plan and contingencies exist in case a company goes out of business. The bidders must also pass criminal background checks.
Elite.
