ICANN Approves Dot-KitchenSink Internet Address Policy

The universe of Internet domains will soon experience a Big Bang, thanks to Thursday’s vote by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers approving a new system for handing out Web addresses. Corporations and other public and private entities will no longer be limited to Web extensions like .com, .net or .org; for a fee that will likely start at $100,000, a company can register a more personalized top-level domain with its own brand name extension, such as .coke, .apple or .prada. Cities will be able to apply for .newyork, .berlin or .moscow.