The ICANN Domain Shake-Up: .com, .org - .everything

The internet and domain industry are about to go through some major changes, due to the new top level domain policies being implemented from ICANN. Top level domains, or tld's are the extensions to a website, such as .com and .org. Currently the number of tld's are limited and any new extensions must be approved and voted in by ICANN. This process is usually long and complicated. Under the new changes that will be implemented early in 2009, a company or individual will be able to purchase a new tld. The cost for a new top level domain will not be cheap, so far the expected cost is in the range of $100,000. ICANN will also have to approve the new extension.

These new changes in the domain industry could open up huge amounts of new tld's. From business to personal extensions, the possibilities are virtually limitless. Just think, you could have your own family tld, such as .jones. These are called vanity domains and the uses for a tld like this are very obvious. Families will have no problem keeping in touch when they can just go to mike.jones, or susan.jones. Major corporations could also get involved in these new changes. A large company could now use its own name as a tld, think news.google, or games.microsoft. Although there has been much speculation over weather or not the largest of the internet companies will get involved in this. It would, however, be interesting to see what Google, Yahoo, and other large internet players could come up with, and they surely have the money and advertising power to make these new tld's work.

All the new possibilities are also causing a huge fuss with some domainers. Many speculate that all the new domain extensions will cause a decrease in the value of their current domain names, such as premium keyword .com's. Some ask, for example, why own coolgames.com when you could have cool.games? The business of buying and selling domains has grown greatly in the past few years. It is now a multimillion dollar industry, and these changes will surely shake some things up.

Weather or not the addition of new tld's will make the value for current domain names rise or fall remains to be seen. Some long time domainers believe that the new changes will actually help to increase the value of .com and other older tld's. Regardless of the outcome, 2009 will surely be a big year for domainers and the domain industry.