Earlier this year ICANN rolled out its plan to allow new “generic” extensions (suffixes) to be created in association with niches, geographical locations, or even corporate names. For example instead of using a .com domain a business could apply to create its own extension like .furniture or .detroit and corporations could apply for TLD’s such as .dell or .ebay. The plans for this type of domain name system has many domain owners worried about the future of staple extensions like .com, .net and .org. Can a system like this really benefit the Internet addressing system, publishers and consumers? The U.S. government doesn’t think so. Earlier this week Meredith Baker, the head of the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) called for ICANN to rethink it’s plans to unveil this idea so quickly. The NTIA’s concerns are that by opening up this system it could jeopardize the balance of current Internet addressing system and thwart Internet commerce.

You may be asking yourself why anyone should care what the U.S. NTIA branch has to say about this. Although the U.S. government cannot mandate or manipulate ICANN’s policy, it’s management of the domain name system is under contract with the U.S. government and ultimately ICANN needs it’s approval to create new generic TLD’s.

I personally think that adding new generic TLD’s is a bit too much for the Internet addressing system. There are already loads of obscure ccTLD’s that are launched each year. It seems that the registrars and ICANN are the only people really benefiting from all of these obscure extensions. Take the .ME extension for example. Country code’s were created to serve specific countries domain name needs. .ME is Montenegro’s country code, however it was rolled out by registrars and touted as the great new brandable extension to use for your personal web pages (hey look at my .ME!). Honestly, I think this is ridiculous. Adding a generic TLD system would make web browsing even more confusing for most users. The average Joe surfing the internet barely even knows what a .info, .tv or a .biz extension is. Imagine having every business that could afford to launch their own TLD marketing their new domains: “Check out Homes.Denver the real estate portal…or was that Denver.Homes?” This just seems to me like a big scheme by ICANN to capitalize on eager businesses and organizations to plunk down their $100,000 application fee to secure their “.whatever” domains. Our current system seems very reasonable. Extensions like .com, .net and .org are the generic TLD’s and are complimented nicely by ccTLD’s (country code, top level domains). It will be interesting to see what decisions are made concerning the future of generic TLD’s. It will also be intriguing to see how the relationship of ICANN with the U.S. government evolves this year with Obama coming into office.

News story: USA Today
ICANN new generic TLD announcement: ICANN

Michael Law
NameTalent.com