Do you run a health centre and are planning to add the top level domain .Docs to your site? Are you a comedian eyeing .Lol?
Looks like search engine giant Google beat you to them.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) closed its window for new generic top-level domain name applications today according to the tech news site TechCrunch. Google announced some of the names it has applied for.
In a blog today by Vint Cerf, the company’s chief Internet evangelist, mentioned some of the obvious choices such as: .google, .youtube, and .docs.
But he also said Google had applied for TLDs which “we think have interesting and creative potential such a .lol.”
“We’re just beginning to explore the potential source of innovation on the Web, and we are curious to see how these proposed new TLDs will fair in the existing TLD environment,” said Cerf.
He pointed out that by 2016 nearly half of the world’s population will be online, “yet only 50 per cent of the Web sites we visit are found in the .com TLD, which was among the first TLDs created in 1984.” Other generic TLDs include .org, .net, .ca and others.
The number of generic TLDs has increased by only 14 in the last 28 years he said.
This new program will likely create somewhere between 300 and 1,000 new gTLDs per year. Applicants have to pay a $185,000 evaluation fee, as well as additional fees once their applications have been accepted, according to TechCrunch.
Half of new TLDs will probably fail, according to the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA).
“Just like any other private business starting up, all these new TLDs will have a 50 per cent chance of going out of business in two or three years,” said Byron Holland, CIRA CEO, “That’s going to be somewhat disquieting to people.”
But Cerf is more optimistic.
“By opening up more choices for Internet domain names, we hope people will find options for more diverse-and perhaps shorter-signposts in cyberspace,” said the Google evangelist who is regarded as the father of the Internet.
