The most radical ever shake-up of the rules governing Top Level Domains means addresses ending in “.coke”, “.ford” or “.google” could appear online next year.
ICANN, the international quango in charge of the web’s addressing system, opens the application process today after six years in development.
As well as “dot brand” TLDs, new “open” TLDs – whereby once up and running anyone could buy a web address ending in the new suffix – will also likely to be snapped up. There is expected to be strong competition to run new suffixes such as “.web”, which could potentially have mass appeal among website owners who could not get the “.com” address they wanted.
To successfully apply for a new web address suffix, companies must pay around £120,000 and show they are technically and financially capable of running a domain registry, a database that connects web addresses to websites. Only the owner of a brand will be able to create a branded TLD, but major companies have so far remained silent on whether they will apply.
Source: Daily Telegraph online
