A new initiative dubbed the “New Generic Top-Level Domains” and organized by ICANN-the nonprofit that has managed Internet names and addresses since 1998-could add more than 1,000 extensions to the roughly two dozen familiar extensions in use now. New extensions are likely to be established in myriad categories: industry terms such as .bank or .hotel; existing brands such as .apple or .bmw; geographic monikors such as .nyc and .london; and new general terms such as .web. The expansion could mean that the owner of a smoothie shop in Miami who couldn’t obtain or afford the domain name “miamismoothieshop.com” could register a different name, for example, “smoothieshop.miami” for less.
The expansion is prompting a swarm of activity by individuals and businesses applying to operate registries for top-level domain names and make money wholesaling them. Theo Hnarakis, chief executive officer of Melbourne IT, calls it the biggest change to the Internet since .com was released 27 years ago. His Digital Brand Services division, based in Santa Clara, Calif., has applied for 146 domain extensions for clients, including large pharmaceutical and media brands. “The Internet’s about to expand in a tenfold way and whether you’re a small business or a big business, you need to start preparing yourself,” he says.
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