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What is your name? Bill Gates?

Cool; would you like to book a domain like www.bill.gates/ and would you like to publish your retirement plans at www.bill.gates/retire-plans.html?

If you are Bill Gates, you can have it; but you will have to wait until the second quarter of 2009 and you must prove that you are Bill Gates and you have a well established brand name to book that domain.

And it is not a joke. We are moving into a new era - ICANN has approved a recommendation from the global stakeholders to introduce new TLDs to the Internet’s addressing system. And this is what they call the “Biggest Expansion in gTLDs Approved for Implementation“.

This decision is not finalized in one day. It has undergone major discussions and planning for last six years.

However, you cannot have any TLD you wish. You must have an established brand that you would need to put forward as an application to the ICANN (responsible for the global coordination of the Internet’s system of unique identifiers like domain names). Your application and brand equity will be properly evaluated by ICANN before allowing you the domain name. Perhaps, they would try to ensure that, none but McDonald’s get the domain name http://www.mc.donalds/. It is not just about first come - first serve. And to add to this, anyone can place objection during the evaluation process (BTW, ICANN will not be the only decision maker when someone places an objection).

So, those who are planning to earn some more money from domain trading, should be a little bit disappointed (domain trading is a big business and you can still do well from regular TLDs like .com or .net) to loose such a big opportunity.

How much would it cost?

This would cost you a lot more than premium domain names. According to Dr Twomey, it may cost you something around a six figure amount ($$$,$$$) to book such a domain name. And this is not a big deal for established brands.

By 2009, we will have more than just 21 TLDs to fight for. But don’t you think it would make a common man’s web browsing more critical? At present, we have a naming convention and people are used to it. Won’t it be more confusing as far as recollection is concerned? And what if the same name exists for two brands in two countries - which would get the domain name?

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