ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) approved the growth of generic TLDs that will allow companies and organizations to choose and create domains. The domains are about to change substantially from domains such as “.com,” “.net,” “.org,” to whatever domain name companies want – but they will come at a price.
Businesses have the option of choosing names to match their domain to their brand name or their products. For example, if Coca-Cola were to choose a domain name, they might choose something like “.coke” or “.coca-cola.” Businesses that are all about going green might choose to put their domain name at “.green.”
However, the option of changing a domain isn’t going to be cheap. The application fee alone is $185,000 with an annual fee of $25,000. For large corporations, this may not seem so expensive and we will probably see them spend millions on these domains very soon. We might also see a good portion of corporations in the same industry compete for certain domain names, so let the bidding begin.
“ICANN has opened the Internet’s addressing system to the limitless possibilities of the human imagination,” said Rod Beckstrom, president and CEO of ICANN. “No one can predict where this historic decision will take us.”
Applications for new generic TLDs will be accepted from Jan. 12, 2012 to April 12, 2012. New domains should be popping up within a year.