Have you heard about this impending disaster? ICANN, the group that oversees the Internet's domain name system, has decided to -- you know, the end parts of Internet addresses, where you typically see .com or .net.

Instead of having a limited number of defined suffixes, as we do now, ICANN will soon let anyone apply for their own custom suffix -- anything from .microsoft to .manscapingmadness. The suffixes can be as long as 63 characters, meaning I could conceivably move my website from jrstart.com to jr.dancing-chickens-bok-bok-so-many-tiny-feet-look-at-them-shimmy. In fact, I think I might.

Now, there is a catch: The new custom Internet suffixes will cost a cool $185,000 apiece. That's a good bit more expensive than the standard 15-dollar-ish you see out there today. ICANN says it'll also require applicants to prove they have a legitimate reason to own the suffix in question. (I won't go into details, but let's just say my dancing-chickens name is a shoo-in for approval.) The idea is that squatters won't be able to go out and steal companies' trademarks only to try to resell them a short time later.

That's all fine and dandy, but think about what a mess this is going to become. Sure, any average Joe won't be able to grab .ibm, but what's to stop 5,000 different companies from clamoring for .computer? And how confusing is this going to get from a user perspective?

As it stands right now, the vast majority of Web surfers barely understand the structure of a domain; most non-techie people just assume everything is dot-com. What's it going to be like when everyone's suddenly faced with -- for a hypothetical example -- apple.com, buy.apple, apple.buy, and apple.store? It's going to be a mess.