ICANN Expected to Announce New Domains Today
M A R I N A D E L R E Y, Calif., Nov. 16 -- The international oversight board for Internet addresses is expected today to select new suffixes in order to help reduce overcrowding in online names ending in .com.
With some 20 million registrations under .com, virtually all ofthe good names have been taken, forcing Web sites to use wordcombinations or abbreviations that are difficult to remember.
New names could make more simple addresses available, whichcould then make Web sites easier to find.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has beenreviewing possibilities and will likely select today six or sonew domain names. Some Internet users are advocating choosingdozens of new Web address suffixes and others are urging ICANN todo nothing for a few more months.
Look For Neo .Geo
Top contenders for new names include .biz and .web for businessand general Web sites and .nom, .name and some variation of .i forindividuals.
ICANN will also strongly consider designating names for specialgroups, such as .coop for business cooperatives, .museum formuseums, .union for labor organizations, .air for the travelindustry and .health for health sites that agree to abide byethical standards that have yet to be written.
Another strong possibility is .geo, for a service not yetavailable on the Internet. The proposal calls for creating Webaddresses based on latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates, sothat users can narrow searches for restaurants, weather and otherinformation about a particular city or region.
Most of the companies proposing new names at a hearing onWednesday used their allotted three minutes to emphasize thestrengths of their suggestions and to challenge unfavorableconclusions in a report released last week by ICANN.
Lou Kerner, chief executive of dotTV, complained that boardmembers were rushing through proposals at the risk of denying dueprocess.
Jonathan Weinberg, who had headed an ICANN task force on newdomain names, urged the board to take all qualified applicants.
