Forget-dot-com

Starting in Q2 2009, you will be able to register anydomainname.yournamehere. (See BBC article.) Rather than tomspot.com, I could have just tom.spot. Or tom.tomspot. Or www.tomspot. Or (maybe?) even just tomspot. Confusing? Heck yes.

Apparently each new TLD will cost thousands of dollars. Of course, as soon as the change hits, any big company with a brand name to protect will need to register their name. Who will win the rights to generic but valuable terms like .groceries or .videogames or .xxx is a mystery, though ICANN, the nonprofit in charge of the domain name system, seems to be suggesting they might be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

Looks like ICANN wants to raise some cash and doesn’t care much for internet users (confusion) and small-time domain owners (cost).

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