New top-level web domains announced

[Jazzy]

Four new generic top-level domains - the letters that appear at the end of web addresses, such as .com - have been announced.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) is expected to roll out the new names within weeks.

They are: شبكة, the Arabic word for "web"; 游戏, the Chinese word for "game"; and the Russian words for "online" and "web site", онлайн and сайт.

Icann hopes hundreds of new top-level domains will eventually be made.

Until now, generic top-level domains (gTLDS) - as they are known - were limited to mostly familiar endings such as .com, .net and .biz.

Wednesday's announcement marks the first set of domains in the new system to be approved.

"You'll note that all four of these new strings are Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs)," said Christine Willett, vice president of the gTLD program, in a blog post.

"This will be the first time non-Latin characters can be used in a generic TLD."

She added: "The move is an effort to create a more inclusive internet."

The new domains will now "proceed to delegation", the final stage before being made live - expected to happen within the next couple of weeks.

Source

 

[Krihol]

Hmmm.. Sounds really interesting.

 

[Bjornar]

.com will always be the main domain.

 

[Darth-Apple]

I'm pretty sure most webmasters with an English target audience won't be purchasing domains with Arabic TLDs.

It's great to see that the internet is expanding its horizons though.

 

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

Seems like the internet was created for and dominated by the English language, nice to see foreign language based things can use their own words.

 

[DrLeftover]

I declined to change my 'adult' site to the .xxx domain when it was first announced.

My host sent me a note saying they had reserved the site name with that extension and I replied saying "thanks, but no thanks".

It wasn't long after that that several services said they were going to block anything with that address as a default.

"So it goes."
- Linda Ellerbee (born 1944)

 

[Evil Eye]

That's a pretty random set of new TLDs.
Still, this is certainly a good thing. You can never have too many TLDs and it's only fair to those not using the Latin alphabet.

 

[dether]

It may be useful to someone: http://gtlds.hubpages.com/hub/All-what-you-need-to-know-about-new-gTLDs I found a really cool article describing the basic things related to the new domain names. Really good written.

There is information about what's going on with the 'launch phases' and how new gTLDs will affect on the search results in google. There, everything is fine as described. Well ok, maybe about these searches in google is not any certain information, but at least give some idea of ​​what to expect.