The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers or ICANN, the agency responsible for creating new domain suffixes
finally voted in favor of designing new ones. According to the proposal, the websites would not be required to use .com (or .org or a couple of other suffixes) of their websites. Instead, the website owners would be able to customize the suffixes to meet their requirements.
However, the customization won't come cheap as the rumors suggest that the top domain suffixes may command the price as high as $200,000. Well, actually it's just the loose change for top companies. In order to apply for these new suffixes, you will have to pay a fee of $185,000 to ICANN for the vetting of the proposal. However, whether your suffix gets approved or rejected, you won't get to see that application money again. According to ICANN, the new system would need more complex infrastructure and the application fees would be used towards funding that.
The new proposal may simple, but it has a long list of detractors. More domain suffixes mean that it would be now more difficult for companies to manage their online personas. Earlier they just had to deal with phony identical names with .com suffixes, but the new suffixes would mean that there would a gazillion other websites to deal with. So, where the new proposal is going to spell opportunities for the marketing professionals, it is going to be a new headache for the legal team. Well, something's gotta give!
So there are pros and there are cons. But with the plethora of new suffixes, we have one more thing to think. As and when new bubble in the internet segment bursts, we won't be able to call it dotcom bubble burst. Hey, it would not be fair to blame .Com alone, would it be? Let us know your suggestions for the new name of the "bubble'.