Want CNET to notify you of price drops and the latest stories?
No, thank you Accept
X
Apple's Mixed Reality HeadsetRemote Working in ParadiseBest Mineral SunscreensBest Solar CompaniesSmart Plugs on SaleMeal Subscription vs. TakeoutBest Satellite Internet ProvidersCurrent Mortgage Rates

Hundreds of new web domain suffixes incoming this year

The first batch will be available around April, with more following towards the end of the year.

Joe Svetlik Reporter
Joe has been writing about consumer tech for nearly seven years now, but his liking for all things shiny goes back to the Gameboy he received aged eight (and that he still plays on at family gatherings, much to the annoyance of his parents). His pride and joy is an Infocus projector, whose 80-inch picture elevates movie nights to a whole new level.
See full bio
Joe Svetlik
2 min read

Forget .com -- you'll soon have hundreds of new Internet address suffixes to choose from if you want to start a website. That's because in just a few months, we'll see the largest expansion of Internet addresses since the system was created in the 1980s, according to the head of the organisation overseeing the expansion.

These will include those from brand names (.cadillac), regional monikers (.vegas, or .scunthorpe maybe) and more generic ones (.like), the Associated Press reports. Thinking caps on if you want to come up with your own.

The first batch will be active around the middle of the year, and will most likely be in Chinese and other languages aside from English, according to ICANN (the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers) CEO Fadi Chehade. Then weeks later we'll see those from single bidders, such as the ones listed above.

We'll have to wait longer for some, like .app, .music and .tech, because many groups are bound to be bidding for them. And these things tend to take a while. If no compromise is found between competing parties, ICANN will auction off names to the highest bidders.

Last year, almost 2,000 businesses and groups put in bids for some 1,400 suffixes. If you're worried about someone claiming your business' name, you can protect it thanks to a programme known as the Trademark Clearinghouse, run by IBM and Deloitte, which starts on 26 March. You'll need to own the trademark in order to claim the name.

Registration will open to us regular Joes sometime after the Trademark Clearinghouse has kicked in.

Will you be registering your own suffix? What would you choose? And should companies be worried about pranksters getting in there and hijacking their names, then trying to flog them back for an extortionate price? Let me know in the comments, or on our Facebook page.