ICANN approves first set of new gTLD, .Amazon rejection looms

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has approved the first set of global Top Level Domains (gTLDs) and users will soon be able to access sites ending with these domain extensions.

The corporation has approved four gTLDs and all of them are non-English words as listed below:

• .شبكة (“Web” in Arabic)
• .游戏 (“Game” in Chinese)
• .онлайн (“Online” in Russian)
• .сайт (“Web site” in Russian)

Approval of four non-English words can be considered as a milestone and according to ICANN this approval marks “the first time that people will be able to access and type in a website address for generic Top-Level Domains in their native language.”

ICANN has revealed that it has finished signing of all four Registry Agreements – two in Cyrillic, one in Arabic and one in Chinese – for the operation of Internationalized Domain Names (IDN).

The corporate is meeting in Durban, South Africa this week where it is discussing the future of the web. Apart from the approval of the above four gTLD, two other gTLD are up for consideration – .Amazon and .Patagonia. US based companies have applied for these and there are governments who are opposing this move as they are claiming that it is their local geographical regions, not the retailers, which deserve the association. Read More