New Internet Address look in coming 2012

The Internet's global coordinator approved the creation of website addresses ending in corporate names, triggering one of the biggest ever shakeups in how the web operates.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) voted overwhelmingly in favour of the proposal at a meeting in Singapore despite fears the shift would cause some confusion and favour large companies.

Websites will soon be able to end with anything from ".shop" to ".canon" after the group that manages Internet addresses approved what it called a historic change in a statement on its website Monday. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which until now allowed 22 suffixes including ".com" and ".org," will accept requests for almost any word in any language from Jan. 12 to April 12.

"This is the biggest change to domain names since the creation of dotcom 26 years ago,

Under the changes, businesses will no longer be restricted to the list of generic top level domains (gthat include .com, .net and .org when they apply to register a website address.

Canon, Deloitte and Hitachi Ltd. are among companies that have expressed interest in company domain names, while generic names will be auctioned to the highest bidders

Industry observers say global giants such as Apple, Toyota and BMW could be in the vanguard of launching websites with their own domain names, ending in ".apple", ".toyota" and ".bmw", as could a city or a trademark.

ICANN chairman Peter Thrush said at a news conference the new naming system will be a "tremendous opportunity for people to take control of this aspect of their branding and develop it in their own way."

ICANN chief executive Rod Beckstrom said applications for the new web suffixes will open on January 12 next year and close 90 days later.

The corporate domain names won't come cheap.It will cost a company $185,000 just to apply and there are a number of criteria that must be met before ICANN will give the nod for a firm to own the domain name of its choice.The fee is needed to recoup the costs associated with the new gTLD programme and to ensure that it is fully funded, ICANN said.

It would also weed out opportunistic applicants seeking to resell domain names for a profit after buying them cheaply, a problem in the earlier days of the Internet.