While some of the new gTLDs will evolve into successful businesses, many others will not, ICANN watchers said. As ICANN begins to evaluate the applications, starting July 12, there will be questions about the business plans of some applicants as well as the technical ability of some to operate a new gTLD, they said.

"almost seemed like a gold rush," said Richard Stockton, a lawyer with Banner and Witcoff, an intellectual property law firm. "There's going to be some [gTLDs] that perform and some that just don't."

Some of the new gTLDs will have benefits -- .pharmacy, for example, could help weed out counterfeit drug sales online -- but others don't have obvious business models, added Erin Hennessy, a partner in the technology group at the Bracewell and Giuliani law firm.

On the other hand, .biz and .info, launched in mid-2001 "have never caught on," she said. There are about 2.2 million secondary-level domains on .biz and 6.5 million on .info.

"Now we're adding .inc and .llc," Hennessy said. "I'm not sure they're that different from a .biz and .info. I wonder how they're really going to be used."