Icann (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), who regulates top-level domain names (such as ‘.com’ and ‘.nz’), has voted to relax the rules.
From 2009 and for an initial “low 6 figure sum”, you would be able to register your name or company brand as a top-level domain. I can for-see the same mad clamour for names that was seen when domain names were first available. The high cost and the review process managed by Icann should keep things sensible … maybe. In the event of multiple submissions for the same name, an auction to determine the highest bidder is going to be the only way. How many bidders would there be for control of ‘.search’, or ‘.news’? … that could get pricey!
The other relaxation of rules is around the registration of non-Roman characters in domain names. There may be a few technical challenges with handling this, but it’s obviously a great step to making the world wide web accessible to everyone (4.5b people don’t user Roman script!)
Here’s an article from the BBC with more details.
That could get interesting. I’d have to make a lot of changes to my site for finding available domain names
By: Available Domain Names on June 27, 2008
at 10:41 pm