Latest plan for domain names as doomed as .coop, .mobi

09.04.2009
Will a plan to allow on the Web next year succeed? On the face of it, the plan has legs: Instead of .com addresses, people and businesses could create new endings such as "spiderman.movie," "wired.magazine," or "the.industry.standard" -- in theory, opening up many more possible URLs and reducing the competition for .com domains.

My forecast: It'll be only slightly more popular than .

The non-profit organization that decides what's allowed on the Internet is ICANN, the . For years, Internet addresses were limited to five in the United States, one of which went at the end of each address. There was .com, .org, .net. .gov and .mil. Originally, .net was meant for use only by the computers of network access providers, and .org was the catch-all for sites that didn't fit into the commercial, government or military categories. In reality, the lines between .com, .net and .org have been erased.

A decade ago during the dot-com boom, ICANN to expand the domain space. In the end, the corporation created thirteen new top-level names between 2001 and 2005.

Pop quiz: Name them!

You probably remember .biz and .info. But most Internet users are completely unaware of .name, .pro, .aero, .coop, .museum, .asia, .cat, .jobs, .mobi, .tel and .travel.