Thousands of new domains to be made after .com shake up

Six years of debate and argument ended last night at a conference in Singapore when the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) changed the future of DOT com. Guidelines will now allow domain names to end in almost any word, so instead of .com you can have .anything. A company such as the clothing company Gap can now buy the ending ‘.gap’ instead of ’www.gap.com’.

Individuals and companies will get the chance to set up websites with almost any address and in any language following the biggest shake-up of the system in 26 years and there will be no restriction to a handful such as .com, .net or .gov. Lettering other than Roman will be allowed for the first time, including Arabic and Chinese.

The issue of buying a relevant web address has become one of frustration when companies and individuals realise the web URL has been bought up by some else and in some cases not even being used. Often a large sum of money has to be paid to buy back the URL.

High profile celebrities will surely be the first to want this for their personal website, for example David.Beckam or Brad.Pitt, or maybe we might even want our own such as Imogen.rees? At £114,000 to deter so-called cyber squatters, I think .com at a slightly cheaper cost of £20 will suffice. The new top-level domain programme will be open to applicants in January and will be live by the end of 2012.