Domain-name expansion OK’d

[TheLegacy]

http://cnnwire.blogs.cnn.com/2008/06...expansion-okd/


(CNN) — The group that coordinates Internet domain addresses has voted to open domain name extensions up to a vast new array of possibilities.

At a meeting in Paris on Thursday, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) unanimously agreed to a policy that will eventually allow a host of new “generic top-level domains” to join the list of 20 domains that now includes dot-com, dot-edu and dot-org, as well as country extensions such as dot-jp or dot-it.

Analysts say the new list could lead to a host of new business-, city- or hobby-specific domain names, such as dot-hotel, dot-flight, dot-fishing or even dot-sex.

ICANN also voted to break the English-language prominence of domain names by allowing “internationalized” names — ones using other languages’ characters, such as Chinese or Arabic.

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well - dot fuckme

[Evil Chris]

I read this article today as well.

I think this is going to confirm what I have suspected for a long time. Catchy domain names on the best TLDs will mean much less than they do now. That is, depending on how the big search engines decide to treat things.

I think however that the search engines will no longer give any preference to dot com, net, or org. It's certainly going to radically change the way SEs look for, and choose to display relevant websites.

So... it's all in the marketing isn't it?