In a move that is expected to add new meaning to the Web as the Wild, Wild, West and make things even more interesting, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) which is responsible for managing the evolution of the Web, is expected to approve new top-level domains (TLD) on Thursday. TLDs comprising of any string of letters such as a company’s name or an individual’s name e.g. .billgates or .apple as well as internationalized domain names that could be written in scripts for Asian and Arabic languages would be possible. Currently, TLDs are limited to business and organization domains such as .com, .net, and .org and country code domains such as .uk (UK) or .it (Italy). In an interview with the BBC, Paul Twomey of ICANN said:

“Like the United States in the 19th Century, we are in the process of opening up new real estate, new land, and people will go out and claim parts of that land and use it for various reasons they have. It’s a massive increase in the geography of the real estate of the internet.”

The new system would be open to anyone to register a domain name. There will be an independent arbitration process for people with grounds for objection to a domain name registration. Registrations can also be rejected based on morality or public order grounds. Good luck .xxx! The application fee for a domain name would be at least several thousand dollars and the expectation is that hundreds of new domains could be created by year end.