The dominance of the dot.coms is over. By the end of this year, addresses on the World Wide Web will use new suffixes such as .shop, .tel and .news.
The first such change in over 10 years was approved Sunday by a meeting in Japan of the Internet`s managing authority on such suffixes, called top-level domains (TLDs).
The new suffixes will be added to existing domain names such as .com for companies, .org for charities and .edu for educational bodies.
"It is clear this is going to happen, and things are moving toward that right now," Esther Dyson, chairwoman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), told reporters.
ICANN will begin taking applications from companies that plan to sell and register the new top-level domains, called registrars. Those companies will submit proposals for the new TLDs and explain how they will screen and register those seeking to own Websites with the new suffixes.
Applications will start in August, and by the end of the year the registrars and their new "dot.somethings" will be chosen. After that, the registrars will sell domain names -- which come before the dot -- to the public.
The selection process will be debated at ICANN`s next meeting in Los Angeles this autumn.
Dyson said the first new Web addresses would start to appear by the end of this year or the beginning of next, but no one will know what the new top-level domains will be until November.
"This will remove much of the artificial scarcity on the Web right now," Dyson said.
Issues
There are no rules on naming dot.coms, but ICANN has decided that guidelines will be needed for naming Websites under new TLDs since registrars will be faced with a hornet`s nest of problems.
Internet companies are concerned that a mess of new TLDs could confuse users.
Concerns have already been raised over the possibility of attempts to register well-known names by companies not connected with the organisation known by that name.
Other worries involve trademark right infringement and the question of whether ownership of a dot.com address gives rights over another "dot.something" address.
That is why registrars will have to make rigorously clear to ICANN their screening process for new Web sites.
Dyson said utmost efforts would be made to ensure that the selection process for new registrars will be done in a transparent and equitable way.
ICANN obtained its policy-making authority in 1998 from the US Commerce Department, which controls the main servers of allowable top-level domains.
Share