There will be hundreds and possibly as many as 1,400, eventually. However, relax…it won’t happen all at once. It’ll be a slow rollout because no one wishes to destabilize the internet, right?
ICANN believes this will improve things…I’m not convinced. I think there’ll be a lot of confusion without a whole lot of improvement. We’re talking about gTLDs (generic top level domains) like .com, .net, .org and .edu. There will be .google, .ford, .apple, .bike, .wed and .book to be followed by many more MS, Amazon, etc. have all applied for domain names already).
As if that weren’t enough…brace yourselves “English only” folks. The four newly delegated gTLDs are in Arabic, Chinese and Cyrillic scripts and are the first of many gTLDs in various non-Latin scripts such as Arabic, Chinese, Greek/Cyrillic and Hindi that will be introduced under the program. The idea behind that is “global inclusivism”. This means the gTLDs will be in non-English alphabets, as well:
“Internationalized Domain Names are available as second-level domains and country code top-level domains (ccTLDs), but this will be the first time non-Latin characters can be used in a generic TLD, according to the organization.
The first four gTLD strings are the Arabic word for web or network, the Cyrillic words for online and website, and Chinese for game. "It's happening -- the biggest change to the Internet since its inception," said Atallah (Akram Atallah, president of ICANN's Generic Domains Division) in a statement. ICANN cleared the four new gTLDs earlier this week.” - http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9243492/ICANN_rolls_out_new_generic_top_level_domains
So, as I was saying, I’m not sure that “trucks.ford” will be any better than “ford.com/trucks”, especially since once arriving at ford.com, one can choose via drop down menus, etc.
I am sure of one thing: It’s going to make keeping track of intellectual property a lot harder. It will also probably make searches somewhat nightmarish.
Well, at least they’ll be phasing it in slowly…as Al.Gore put it, a slightly inconvenient fact.
Source:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9245831/Brace_yourself_for_flood_of_new_domain_names
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9243492/ICANN_rolls_out_new_generic_top_level_domains