LOS ANGELES Calif. – The Internet got its first new batch of international domain names last Thursday with the selection of .biz, .name, .info, .pro, .museum, .coop, .aero that will enable a lot more Web site variety.
The decision by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers capped a half decade of discussions about how to relieve the crowded field of addresses ending in .com.
ICANN approved .info for general use, .biz for businesses, .name for individuals, .pro for professionals, .museum for museums, .coop for business cooperatives and .aero for the aviation industry.
“This is only an initial sampling,” ICANN chairwoman Esther Dyson said. “The ones that were accepted … will provide additional utility, but they are probably not the only ones that would qualify.”
Though additional rounds are expected, Dyson said ICANN has “not yet determined how we go forward from here.”
The new suffixes, which could appear in use by mid-2001, are designed as alternatives to .com, a crowded suffix with some 20 million registrations. It would be similar to adding area codes to the national phone system to accommodate growth.
The additions are the first major ones to the Internet since the domain name system was developed in the 1980s, although ICANN has added some regional suffixes recently, including .ps for the Palestinian territories.
Web sites seeking a .com suffix are now forced to use word combinations or abbreviations that are difficult to remember.
Even .net and .org are getting crowded — the American Medical Association goes by ama-assn.org because ama.org was claimed by the American Marketing Association.
New suffixes could make more simple addresses available, which could then make Web sites easier to find. They could also begin a new virtual land rush, as speculators and trademark holders compete to claim the best names first.
Now, ICANN must negotiate contracts with companies or groups that made the winning proposals.
Members opened deliberations by stressing the need for high standards in the first round as part of a desire to limit the number of new names.
“We’re looking for compelling reasons to select these people rather than trying to take anyone that can remotely fit,” said Esther Dyson, the board’s chairwoman.
Board members generally agreed to avoid controlling content and rejected .kids for children and .health for prescreened health information.
“I don’t think this is something ICANN should be promising in the first place, and second we would be promising more than we could deliver,” Dyson said of .kids.
Other proposals were dismissed on technical and financial grounds. ICANN, for instance, preferred waiting for standards before approving suffixes for telephone numbers, such as .tel.
The board initially favored .geo for Web addresses based on latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates. But that suffix was dropped because one of its sponsors, JV Team LLC, had ties with two other proposals on the short list, including .biz, which was adopted.
The group had considered .web from Afilias LLC but substituted .info from the same applicant at the last minute because of concerns that Image Online Design Inc. has been unofficially registering .web for about five years. IOD also sought a sanctioned .web.
Most computers aren’t configured to reach .web sites, but there could have been clashes similar to assigning the same phone number to two different individuals. The board did not address similar issues with unofficial .biz registrations.
In all, 47 applications were received by the Oct. 2. deadline.
Companies or groups proposing new suffixes paid a $50,000, nonrefundable fee for the chance to become record keepers for new names. As the registry operators, they would be able to charge a few dollars per name registered, an amount that could total in the tens or millions of dollars for the most popular suffixes.
Currently, .com, .net and .org are the only designated suffixes available to anyone worldwide.
VeriSign Global Registry Services functions as their registry, and ICANN’s desire to add suffixes was in part to foster competition among registries.
New suffixes have been under consideration since the mid-1990, but disputes remained over how many, which ones and who gets to register new names.
