ICANN, (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the board that oversees what names can be used for internet domain addresses (which at this time is limited to 22, such as .com, .gov, .tv and so on...)has now opened the floodgates to virtually any name desired, such as .apple, .computer or .car. Apparently it will cost $185,000.00 to apply for one of these domain names, to keep the average person from gobbling up lots of inventive domain names and sitting on them until someone ransoms them.
Will this be a good thing for the internet though? I don't know, seems to me like it could make the internet an even more chaotic and confusing place than it already tends to be. I imagine search engines will certainly be over-burdened trying to find a queue of good results until their engines are over-hauled to handle sorting through all the new possible domain names. I know that even with just 22 domain names it's been possible to make an embarrassing mistake, I'll never forget the time I wanted to show my son how he could learn about our government on the internet, and typed in whitehouse.(com) instead of whitehouse.(gov) That was certainly a memorable mistake!
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