Information Madness

Starting in early 2009, almost any word will be able to replace ".com" in a Web page address. The decision was made by the organization that manages the technical underpinnings of the Web the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

ICANN wants "to increase competition and choice," CEO Paul Twomey says. thousands of domains to protect their brands. And it could make some Web pages easier — and some harder — to find.

 

Fees haven't been set but could start around $100,000. Not all words qualify. An application can be thrown out if it conflicts with a trademark (".pepsi"), is too similar to an existing domain (".kom"), is a geopolitical term claimed by a government or other group (".china"), or is a threat to morality or public order.

I like the comment made by Avi Silberschatz, chair of the computer science department at Yale University who says that nobody type in domain names anymore. They just use Google to find the site. Which is 100% sure.

So it doesn't matter what these new domains are, as long as it gets indexed by google, we should be all set. It would be really difficult for Google to rank the sites though. If someone types in ebay, what Google should bring up?? is it ebay.com or xyz.ebay?