Imagine a web where domains can end in just about any generic top-level domain (new gTLD), e.g. .metafilter. Well, that's soon a reality:

The organization that oversees the Internet address system is preparing to open the floodgates to a nearly limitless selection of new website suffixes, including ones in Arabic, Chinese and other scripts. That could usher in the most sweeping transformation of the Domain Name System since its creation in the 1980s

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posted by Foci for Analysis on Jun 18, 2011 - 103 comments

The popular online trading site eBay is one of the many companies that wants to have its own domain name. [more inside]
posted by finite on Jun 26, 2008 - 69 comments

ICANN disses the the dot. The guy who runs the Internet Multicasting Service teamed up with the guy who runs the Internet Software Consortium and submitted a proposal to mange the .ORG registry. ICANN's conslutants [sic] dumped on the proposal (300KB PDF) claiming it is among the worst proposals from a technical standpoint. Mind you, ISC produces the software that runs the DNS and actually operates root and top-level servers. And ICANN thinks they lack the technical mojo? Wow! Are we all ready to admit that ICANN is completely corrupt and beyond saving? More info here. (via IP)
posted by chipr on Aug 31, 2002 - 12 comments

Verisign (aka Satan) is set to relinquish the management of the .org domain pool this week, after agreeing to drop both the .org and .net registries to keep the .com one until 2007. ICANN is meeting on it this week (webcast). The list of all interested parties with competing applications is here, but personally I'm pulling for Carl from media.org's proposal for a public trust. For anyone that owns a .org domain, this is one to watch.
posted by mathowie on Jun 26, 2002 - 8 comments

johnsmith.name and many more silly new suffixes. Do we need this many? I have yet to see anything good with the previous additions, it all looks a bit like those http://take.me.to/, http://fly.to redirectional services.
posted by tiaka on Nov 17, 2000 - 2 comments

All of this talk about madonna.com and string.com seems to me to be just a mad scramble to grab a 'scarce' resource (ie. the .com TLD). The only problem is that the scarcity is completely artificial. Networking expert and lawyer Karl Auerbach has just been elected to ICANN as the US at-large rep on a platform of reducing ICANN's role from it current one as a overreaching international law making body. He says that the DNS system is capable of handling far more than just a few top-level domains like .com, .org, .net, .uk, .au etc. He says it could handle millions.
posted by lagado on Oct 17, 2000 - 5 comments