ICANN Makes Some Sweeping Changes To Domain Names

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

ICANN has voted to make some interesting changes to domain names and the management of those names.

WebProNews has a fairly comprehensive post on the topic. One of the areas that I do find interesting and worth reporting is the proposed end to domain name tasting. To quote from the post:

It passed a resolution to eliminate domain tasting, a practice of using the grace periods to register domain names in bulk to see which ones are profitable.

Many people have called for the banning of this practice – they have finally decided to listen. Even bigger is the issue of opening up the current domain classification restrictions. You will soon be able to classify your own web address – at a cost – perhaps as high as $100,000.

It will be interesting to see how some of the large corporations use this freedom. Will we see search.msn or search.google. I can see over time there will be a lot of confusion. One of the areas that I don’t quite understand is the requirement to have a ‘business plan and technical capacity’.

How long will take for domain registration businesses to find a way around this requirement allowing individuals to register names under their ‘business plan and technical capacity’. Removing domain name tasting has been a necessity – putting stiff requirements on domain names is a different story. Time will tell.