Good news for DNS providers, and IT folks in general. ICANN’s New Generic Top-Level Domains Program (gTLDs) were cleared to proceed to delegation earlier this week. There will be a good outcome to these gTLDs being put into place – an increase, and possibly a dramatic one – in the number of TLDs (Top-Level Domains). In fact, this means we might see the creation of 1,400 new domain names. That would, indeed, be a dramatic increase, as currently we have 22 (such as .COM, .BIZ, and .ORG).
These delegated gTLDS are in Cyrillic, Arabic, and Chinese. The program plans to also introduce Greek and Hindi, two more non-Latin scripts.
These first new gTLDs, or strings, are:
- شبكة (xn--ngbc5azd) – the Arabic word for “Web” or “Network”
Registry : International Domain Registry Pty. Ltd. - онлайн (xn--80asehdb) – Russian for “Online”
Registry: Core Association - сайт (xn--80aswg) – Russian for “Web site”
Registry: Core Association - 游戏 (xn--unup4y) – Chinese for “Game”
Registry: Spring Fields, LLC
Akram Allah, president of ICANN’s Generic Domains Division, wrote on ICANN’s blog about the new gTLDs in a piece titled, “Dawn of a New Internet Era,” on October 23rd. In the piece he explained:
Today marks an historic moment, not only for the New gTLD Program, but for the Internet as a whole. Today, the first new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) from ICANN’s New gTLD Program were delegated, or introduced into the Internet’s Root Zone. What does this mean? Well, it means a few things. From a big picture perspective, it signals the beginning of the largest-ever expansion of the Domain Name System (DNS); a change that promises to promote global innovation, competition and consumer choice.
People will have to wait 30 days before accessing the new domains. But this is definitely revolutionary when it comes to the global internet infrastructure.
As a DNS provider, we look forward to supporting these new domains and forthcoming ones in the near future!
