The Internet is going to have some new addresses tomorrow as ICANN, the international organization responsible for net nomenclature, announces all the new suffixes that have been approved. You know, the words that appear after the dot where com and net and org go now. This has been coming for some time and your humble Tech Report has been talking about it pretty often but always as a theoretical abstract as opposed to an actual reality.
New York City wants Internet addresses ending in “.nyc,” while several companies and groups are looking to create “.doctor,” ”.music” and “.bank.” Google Inc. is also seeking “.YouTube” and “.lol” — the digital shorthand for “laugh out loud.” Others are looking to attract non-English speakers with suffixes in a variety of languages.
It will take about a year for these to get online. The effort is being paid for by about 350 million dollars in application fees collected. ICANN expects that once the system is really humming, some 1000 new suffixes will be generated each year.
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