GLOBAL DOMAIN: International Internet Board Approves Polyglot Web-Addresses

Here at Transracial, we make an effort not to be too self-congratulatory — but sometimes you just can’t help it!

Case in point — the recent tsunami of coverage about the new move toward individualized Top Level Domains (TLDs), such as .gay, .eco and .nyc.

As many of you know, starting next year ICANN (the international domain regulatory body) will allow, well, everyone to snap up any domain combination they see fit.

This means web-sites will not longer be limited to ho-hum domains such as .com, .net, .org or those cutesy country suffixes — but rather any TLD domain they can think of.

Over the past few weeks, everyone from The New York Times to The New York Post to The New York Observer have reported on the trend.

But here at Transracial, we kinda/sorta broke the whole story with THIS lengthy report way back on August 28th.

Anyway.  Although those eye-catching TLDs are en route — they’re still months and months away.

But right NOW, there is…perhaps…even more exciting TLD news.  Last night, the ICANN board voted to liberalize country domains at the end of their most recent global conference in Korea!

This means that in a few months, folks will finally be able to type URLs in languages using non-Latin alphabets.

For instance, in China, websites will be able soon be in Chinese; in the Middle East they might be in Arabic or Hebrew; in Greece in Greek letters, Russia in Russian letters.

You get the idea — and if you don’t, just watch the nifty video above.

Furthermore, websites will also be able to end with suffixes, too, that are not Latin-letter based.  So that “.gr” at the end of Greek websites may soon be comprised of Greek letters; the “ae” at the end of sites from the United Arab Emirates in Arabic letters.

It’s all pretty cool, and will be implemented soon. ICANN committed to fast-tracking this new global TLD system so that the first examples can begin to appear by November 16th!

Meanwhile, those .gay and .eco folks continue to work with ICANN to establish the protocols needed for further TLD liberalization — expected to take place next year.

As we noted, it costs at least $185,000 to apply to own a TLD such as .gay or .nyc — so this battle is gonna be long and costly.

While we wait and watch how it all plays out, we’re stoked to see how those new polyglot web addresses will soon look on-line.