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domain names

ICANN Approves 4 new TLD’s and all are Non-English

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The news coming out of ICANN )the non-governmental body that manages the Internet) today was the introduction of 4 new Top Level Domains (TLD’s) that consumers and businesses will be able to purchase instead of .com or .net variants.  The amazing bit of this news is isn’t that there are even more variations to purchase, its that these are the first Non-English TLD’s to ever be made available.

The new TLD’s released are:

  • .شبكة (“Web” in Arabic)
  • .游戏 (“Game” in Chinese)
  • .онлайн (“Online” in Russian)
  • .сайт (“Web site” in Russian)

The world is changing fast. The Internet will not be managed by English character domain names for much longer.

Top Level Domain Name Extensions Revealed

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Internet Map
Credit: Wikipedia

Many people have questioned how they might come to own a domain such as a iam.john that could power their website.   These folks have stumbled into extensions of the Top Level Domain Name (TLD) managed by ICANN the governing body of the Internet.  Around two years ago ICANN allowed corporations to spend $100,000 to petition for their own names to be used TLD extensions.  In non-tech speak these TLD extensions are better known as the .com that follows your favorit website name.

Why is this important today?  As the Internet grows and scales to accommodate more and more users there will inevitably be more TLD extensions put into production.  While this is a mostly an invisible process an unfortunate precedent has been set.  With six figure requirements to set new TLD extensions there are fewer consumer benefits to this policy.

If you are curious and want to see This is a full list of Top Level Domain Name Extenions you can register your domain with any of these extensions at your favorite domain registrar.

Let us know what you think about this by commenting!