Dot.com could soon be a thing of the past

From next year, people will be able to apply for their own piece of the web, meaning that websites such as .google or .manchester may start to appear throughout cyberspace.

In 2008 the top level of the internet (the part that comes after the dot) will be liberalised, meaning that anyone can apply for their own slice of the net. Albeit it will be a pricey and complex endeavour, with proposal fees around $100 000 and applicants needing to prove they can run an intricate and sophisticated piece of the web’s infrastructure, but this innovation could change the way the internet operates forever. At the moment there are only 271 other endings to internet addresses besides .com, and most of these represent the country name the site is based in, for example .co.uk or .co.de. The problem experts are warning about with the introduction of freedom of domain names is that people could launch websites with names such as .nazi and .nigger; however the company in charge of the liberalisation, ICANN has said they are in intense discussions over the rules that will be implemented for applying for a top level domain (TLD) name.

Some TLD names do already exist, but people have been slow to take them up, mainly the companies who offer them say, because the public don’t know they exist. One such company who run the .name domain have been offering the suffixes for six years, but so far only have 250,000 URLs, compared with the 60 million .coms. This could be all set to change with a well publicised campaign to open the net up to the public. This could provide better competition in the dotcom dominated market, which experts welcome as a positive development, and could indicate the shape of the internet in years to come. No longer will we see the web in the form of just dotcom, there will be limitless possibilities as to what an internet address can end with, which could mean the end for the dotcom expression being used as a colloquialism for the net. Only time will tell.

Source:

Guardian