ICANN Domain Name Expansion

If you haven’t yet heard, ICANN (also known as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, also known as the folks who determine what domain names are allowed) voted recently to allow additional top level domain names to be made available.

So what does that mean?  Well according to this article:

Under the changes, businesses would no longer be restricted to the list of generic top level domains (gTLDs) that include .com, .net and .org when they apply to register a website address.

In this article, Engadget says:

.com may soon be replaced by .Canon (for cameras), .eco (for green sites) or even .programming (for, you know, programming sites).

While this may sound cool on the surface I’m not all that excited about it.  This is going to lead to some major confusion amongst users.  Do I go to pepsi.com or should I visit refreshment.pepsi?  Is google.com still my search engine of choice or should I be using stuff.google.com?  Luckily, it looks like this isn’t going to be all that rage at least initially.

Instead of the $6.99 – $13.99 that most people are paying to register a domain name, to get one of these you’re looking at $185,000 up front and $25,000 annually.  With that kind of price tag your local bloggers and mom and pop shops simply won’t be shelling out for their personalized domain name.

What do you think?  Is this a something to be worried about or a non issue?

More Reading:

• Biggest Expansion in gTLDs Approved for Implementation – ICANN
• ICANN approves domain name expansion – The Washington Post
• ICANN’s Custom Domains May Make Cyber-Squatting More Expensive – eWeek.com
• ICANN domain name expansion to shake-up new web addresses – TechDigest