New Top-Level Domain – Dot Whatever

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has recently approved new top-leve domain name. Currently, the web has .com .net .org or country level TLDs. Soon you can expect to have .whatever domain (whatever means whatever).

To have this kind of domain is not cheap. The application alone is $185,000 and the annual fee is $25,000. I wonder why the application fee and the annual fee is too expensive. I think it is meant to control the number of people that own the domain names.

The application for the new generic will be accepted from January 12, 2012 to April 12, 2010 and the new domain name will be appear on the Internet within a year.

Personally I think this is a great idea because it may cause confusion to most people. People might not be able to differentiate a company domain from a government domain for instance.