ICANN Approves Custom Top-Level Domains

ICANN, the organization responsible for the handling of the Internet’s “names and numbers” has passed a rather historical plan that will allow companies or people the opportunity to create a custom “general” top-level domain (.com, .org, .net, et cetera). Picture for example focus.ford, vita.playstation or microsoft.windows – it’ll be possible beginning in 2012.

The Board vote for the plan saw 13 approvals, 1 opposing and 2 abstentions, which is in all regards an overwhelming vote of confidence. Are these custom top-level domains bound to confuse? There’s a chance, but for companies such as those mentioned above, it’ll be one further way they can differentiate themselves from the rest and not be forced to use the traditional .com TLD for their main websites.

Don’t go expecting to sign up for a firstname.lastname kind of address, however, as the fees to both register and maintain a gTLD are exorbitant – so much so though some are wondering where the money is set to go (ICANN is a US government non-profit). Nevertheless, an ‘evaluation’ fee estimated at $185,000 is required to have ICANN research and decide as a board whether or not to approve the gTLD, with a quarterly fee of $6,250 required to maintain it.

In addition, there will be a $0.25 fee per transaction (domain registered under the gTLD) once a total number of 50,000 domains are registered. For example, a company such as Ford may not have to pay these additional minuscule fees, but if someone registers a broad gTLD name and opens it up to domain registration, that 50,000 could be reached rather fast.

It might seem a little strange given the large fee, but ICANN is limiting the number of new gTLDs to be issued out each year to 1,000, so those wealthier folk hoping to purchase a generic name may have a difficult time beating out well-established companies who arguably deserve their gTLD more.

Applications for gTLDs will begin to be accepted this coming January, and will remain to be accepted until April. ICANN expects that these gTLDs will become usable in late 2012.