Nine and a half years ago, shortly after the introduction of the .biz top-level domain, I registered this domain, business-opportunities.biz. Ever since, people’ve wondered whether or not I was crazy not to go with a nice, normal, dot com. Well, it looks like I’ll finally be vindicated in my decision. In a decade, the dot com will probably be as rare as the .biz is today when hundreds of new top-level domains enter the market
The pillar of the basic Web address – the trusty .com domain – is about to face vast new competition that will dramatically transform the Web as we know it. New Web sites, with more subject-specific, sometimes controversial suffixes, will soon populate the online galaxy, such as .eco, .love, .god, .sport, .gay or .kurd.
This massive expansion to the Internet’s domain name system will either make the Web more intuitive or create more cluttered, maddening experiences. No one knows yet. But with an infinite number of naming possibilities, an industry of Web wildcatters is racing to grab these potentially lucrative territories with addresses that are bound to provoke.