New Domain Names Coming in 2008

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) said Thursday that new top-level domain names (TLDs) for general use could be live by summer of 2008, and invited public comment on procedures for creating the new domains - the first since 2000.

Since .info and .biz were established for general use in 2000, ICANN has only approved six regional and industry-specific domains, including .asia, .museum and .travel. While it did not offer specifics, ICANN said it would work to make the process smooth such that new TLDs can be created more quickly in the future. However, businesses have complained that more names leads to more cybersquatting, and pointed out that both .biz and .info have failed to take off in the marketplace.