LONDON (Brand Republic) - The company which oversees the management of domain names on the web has approved the creation of a number of new suffixes, which could include .travel, .shop and .bank.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) unanimously approved the move at a meeting in Japan yesterday (Sunday, July 16). The new top-level domains will be the first new domain names since the Eighties and will join existing top-level domains such as.com, .org and .net.
Icann has not decided on how many new names will be created, or what they will be. Registrars -- companies that want to sell and register the domains -- can submit applications from August. Icann will select the registrars and their chosen domains at a meeting in Los Angeles in the autumn, and the new names will be phased in by December 31 2000.
The move is designed to increase the choice of names available to website owners. However, it has drawn criticism from some industry experts, who have expressed concerns that the new domains will confuse users and that it could result in increased trademark infringement.