An Internet oversight board has given the Web a new batch of domain names, choosing .biz, .name and five other suffixes to help ease the dotcom name crunch.
The decisions Thursday by the Internet Corp for Assigned Names and Numbers capped a half-decade of discussion about how to relieve the crowded field of addresses ending in .com, which has some 20 million registrations worldwide.
The new names are the first major additions since the system of domains, or Internet address suffixes, was developed in the 1980s. The new suffixes could appear in use by the middle of next year.
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."
There are already specialized suffixes familiar to most computer users, such as .edu and .gov, which are for educational institutions and government agencies. But .com, .net and .org currently are the only suffixes designated as available to anyone worldwide.
The new suffixes are similar to adding area codes to the national phone system in an effort to accommodate growth.
They could make more simple addresses available and Web sites easier to find. A computer user, for example, could someday type ama.health to reach the American Medical Association Web site instead of www.ama-assn.org. The current name is so long because ama.org belongs to the American Marketing Association.
The new suffixes could also begin a new Internet land rush, with speculators and trademark holders competing to claim the best names first. ICANN must now negotiate contracts with companies or groups that made the winning proposals.
New suffixes have been under consideration since the mid-1990, but there were disputes over how many, which ones and registration. ICANN was designated by the Commerce Department in 1998 as the overseer of domain names and online addresses.
For this week's meeting, companies proposing new suffixes paid US$50,000 for the chance to become record keepers for the new names. As registry operators, they would be able to charge a few dollars per name registered, an amount that could add up to millions of dollars for the most popular suffixes.
In all, 47 applications were received by the Oct. 2. deadline.
Board members rejected .kids for children and .health for prescreened health information. They also dismissed .tel for telephone numbers, .geo for Web addresses based on location and .web over concerns that it has already been unofficially registered.
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