Upcoming flood of new top-level domains could change how we surf the internet

By Graham Templeton on January 31, 2014 at 9:30 am

A big name start-up called Donuts Inc. is finally getting a chance to test its great theory of the internet: URLs matter, and if Donuts just happens to get rich along the way, so be it. That’s the sales pitch, as the company rolls out the first seven of potentially hundreds of new top-level domains (TLDs), insisting that the new approach will change the way we use the internet. The new TLDs (sometimes called generic TLDs or gTLDs), which became available this week through dozens of domain sales companies, are: .bike, .clothing, .guru, .holdings, .plumbing, .singles, and .ventures. That .com of yours seems a little dull now, eh?

So, why do you care? Unless you’d already been planning on starting up a clothing company, you probably don’t in the short term. However, it is true that the new regulatory approach to URLs, first exploited here by Donuts , could be revolutionary — ICANN, the body in charge of administering TLDs, decided a few years ago to allow open season on address endings. If you’ve got $185,000 lying around to buy an application, and another $25,000 per year for administration fees, then you can go register just about any string of three or more letters.

Read more: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/175710-upcoming-flood-of-new-top-level-domains-could-change-how-we-surf-the-internet

-- Extreme Tech 2014-01-31

Sounds like it would help a person do a google search by searching for a key portion of the address and pulling up just select domains....pretty much like sorting a certain way.

If most people use Google or other search engines, what would it matter?

You have a point laislica: Google will love this. Instead of guessing at .com, people will just use Google instead.

Good idea but the current search engines are pretty good at what they do already and how will that affect the number of popups and spam stuff we get at the moment. Not a lot will change for the likes of you and I methinks.

"So, why do you care? Unless you’d already been planning on starting up a clothing company, you probably don’t in the short term."

I don't care. Next post, please.

So could someone other than Target get Target.clothing or Target.homefurnishings? If so, it seems it could be misleading and dangerous.

If most people use Google or other search engines, what would it matter?

that is somehow scary isn't it? seen so many people who google for something like www.thaivisa.com instead to type into a browser. why the heck?