The BBC reports that ICANN released a list of new top level domain names that it will vote on Thursday. The names under consideration are:
- .biz
- .name/.nom/.per
- .web
- .health
- .geo
- .union
- .museum
- .info
- .air
- .one
- .co-op
- .post
- .event
What an underwhelming list. Biz, .per/.nom, and .web all make sense, but the others are far too narrow and limited if only a few additional TLDs names are going to be approved. I also can’t understand why they eliminated .kids and .xxx Surely there is far more content that is pornographic or, conversely, aimed at children than there are museum and union sites. Why not provide TLDs specifically for those very large segments of the Internet?
On the other hand, if they approve .web I’ll be one of those sheep trying to register new domain names (though only ones I actually plan to use — squatters are probably going to suck up all the new domain names pretty quickly regardless of what is approved).