author: Jennifer

In a move that got everyone in the industry buzzing, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) had finalized its decision to relax rules on permitting the introduction of new Internet domain names. What is even more earth shattering is that, for the first time ever, they are allowing registration for addresses that are entirely in a non-English language! This comes at the heel of increasing demand for new domain names as prime online real estate is hard to come by these days. Moreover, with Internet usage expanding into all parts of the world that don’t speak English, this is indeed a very logical development.

We are obviously ecstatic to receive this piece of news as we understand the frustration of discovering your perfect domain name has been taken by another website. Soon, we can provide you with more choices and freedom! In the near future (possibly next year), we will start to see top-level domain names like .nyc or .bank or .fashion popping up around the Internet. These new endings can make your website much more memorable to your visitors and become a great catchy promotional tool. It also creates a whole new creative outlet for you to express yourself

With ICANN’s new guidelines, it would make it easier for companies and groups to propose new domain suffixes, instead of following the previous process, where bids can take years to be approved.  Having said that, it is not without limitations. Anyone can object an approval on the grounds of racial discrimination, trademark conflicts, or other terms with an offensive connotation. Moreover, to recover the $20 million expense it incurred for this undertaking, ICANN would need to charge approximately US $100,000 for each name. Definitely not pocket change for the majority of us.

Even though the benefits associated with this new process are very appealing, there are still a lot of wrinkles to be ironed out in this new change to the online landscape.  This includes how politically taboo terms will be judged and the issue of censorship. And on a more humourous note, ICANN may also run into the problem of “word warp”. This is when a word is spelled exactly the same in one language, but has a completely different meaning in each language. For example, .pet would make a great  address for a pet store ecommerce site in English. However, translated into French and you got yourself a domain name meaning “fart”. So, if you do decide to submit a new domain name in the future, please make sure you have done your research on the word and its possible meaning.

Like we have mentioned above (aside from the possible embarrassing moments), while this is a great opportunity for those of you who are in need of a innovative domain name, there’s still some way to go before this procedure will be smoothly running. But in the meantime, you can still register a new domain address with Doteasy for the affordable price of $25.00/yr!

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