Internet Addresses Getting a Makeover in 2012
Internet Addresses Getting a Makeover in 2012
Posted 10/12/2010 at 2:48pm
| by Ryan Whitwam
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Plans are moving ahead to radically alter the way web addresses are structured in the coming years. Starting as early as 2012, the importance of .com might begin to wane as Generic Top Level Domains (GTLD) begin to show up. Instead of going to a .com address, the domain could be the name of the company. For example support.microsoft might exist as a legitimate address.
It's going to be a different world. Companies that use GTLDs would not just buy domain from a registrar. They would have to apply to Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) directly. It's going to cost some serious change to apply. The application fee is nearly $200,000. But you better believe people will pay it to get very common words, like .search or .hotel as their own personal domain.
Unlike the wild west of domain names now, ICANN will be working to ensure branded names, like IBM, McDonald's, or Google, aren't bought up by third parties. There is a trademark dispute system in place for thise times when two entities have legitimate claim to the same name. Do you think .com will go away, or are GTLDs going to just be a sort of shorthand?
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d3v
October 13, 2010 at 2:56pm
.com is a GTLD.
Anyway these new TLDs won't change anything. .com is much too popular. People will still visit microsoft.com and not home.microsoft or whatever. If anything these new TLDs are a way for ICANN to squeeze more money out of trademark holders who will have to make defensive registrations to protect their brand.
Trooper_One
October 13, 2010 at 12:54pm
... so anyone wanna take a guess as to what Jenna Jamison's website would look like under the new system?
Keith E. Whisman
October 13, 2010 at 8:54am
I can only imagine how this will affect the thriving, internet porn industry. I can also imagine how this can help net filtering software become far more powerful and reliable.
Tazerenix
October 13, 2010 at 3:00am
It will be interesting to see how forums and cms-like systems will handle this, all the url and email address validation systems will need to be rewritten since they currently check for an extra .** at the end of an address (be it URL or Email). And how browsers that automatically search keywords if it doesn't have a domain extension (like chrome and firefox).
Mr_Histamine
October 12, 2010 at 4:57pm
That, and it'll provide greater security - as mis-spelling an address won't re-direct you to a virus infested website.
I can see ".com" becoming a place for everyone's personal pages - like a Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Pandora, and Dropbox all rolled into a nice little package. Instead of going to individual sites, you (or others) can just go to [your_name].com to do everything.
TechW
October 12, 2010 at 3:08pm
So, only deep pocket companies need apply. What is this? I guess I need more information as from the little information in this article that seems grossly unfair to small businesses.
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