ICANN Opens Floodgates for New Top Level Domains
ICANN Opens Floodgates for New Top Level Domains Flickr

The Internet is set to move beyond the simple .com and .org's that users have grown to loathe and love.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers approved Monday a plan to allow generic top-level domain extensions (gTLDs), allowing companies and organizations to register anything they want as a suffix.

For example, this website could register .ibtimes and make a site called technology.ibtimes. Apple could do the same with iphone5.apple, for instance.

The suffixes are not limited to just company names, however. Everything from .shop to .missamerica is available.

Prior to this ICANN only allowed 22 suffixes including .com and .org, but will accept requests for almost any word in any language from Jan. 12 to April 12.

The move may help prevent cybersquatting, the practice of registering domain names and selling them to trademark owners at a profit.

Large businesses may have to buy addresses to keep their brands from being hijacked, which costs $500,000 per company, estimated the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse.

Today's decision will usher in a new Internet age, Peter Dengate Thrush, chairman of ICANN's Board of Directors, said in the statement. We have provided a platform for the next generation of creativity and inspiration.

Applications will cost $185,000, and the first of these top level domain names won't go live until the end of 2012, Adrian Kinderis, a member of ICANN's advisory council, said in an interview Monday.

ICANN has authorized small numbers of new domain names in the past, such as the approval for the .xxx domain for adult content websites in March.

In 2009, the group also allowed domain names in languages other than English, such as .ru for Russian sites.

A global campaign will begin soon be launched to raise awareness of new TLDs.