The Internet Will Soon Add 1,000+ New Suffixes, .Anything Is Possible (Almost)

In the final result of almost a decade of debate over adding more possibilities to .org, .com, .net and so on, the Internet will soon have domains like .clothing and .plumbing. Here’s what you need to know so you can field tech support phone calls from your parents when the new suffixes go into effect.

The suffixes, known as generic top-level domains (gTLD), are fairly ingrained in Internet users by now, and the campaign to expand them, headed by the non-profit group ICANN, has been going on for eight years. Now, after all this time, we’re finally going to see if an Internet where .com is no longer necessarily king is more diverse or just confusing.

Either way, the change is intended to alleviate problems with restricted domain name availability under the current system. It will also open up the possibility of international domain names, which is nice for non-English speakers who might finally be free of the need to use English suffixes.

Actually, Google’s first new domain name will be the Japanese word for “everyone,” which just gives you that warm, trusting feeling they want to instill in you. It makes mining every last bit of data about your existence so much easier.

No one expects the change to be that confusing, since a lot of Internet users just type a website’s name into a search bar and navigate to it through the results (no matter how many times you tell them they can just go there directly).

Still, the new domain names are going to have to build some trust with the public, which is why big brands are throwing down cash to get their own company names as suffixes. (Like .nike and .cadillac.) We’re excited to see more diversity across the Internet, and we can’t wait to tell you all about the weird URLs we find, because that’s probably about to become a full-on Internet sport.

(via Politico, image via hdzimmerman)

Meanwhile in related links

• Let’s hope everyone takes this better than recent YouTube changes
• And other recent YouTube changes
• And maybe it can build trust more successfully than cryptocurrency