.com switch sparks corporate concerns
An investigation conducted by The Times has found that the planned expansion of internet domains to incorporated any suffix are meeting stiff resistance from governments and corporations.
From January the Internet Cosrporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), will release a block of new addresses, including everything from .sex to .google – a lucrative gold mine for the body as it flogs the monikers to everyone with a website.
The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse calculate that the switch could force the world’s 500 largest companies to spend an extra $400,000 annually on domain names as businesses and organisations purchase the additional domains to protect their trademarks.
One industry insider told the paper: “Companies, whether they want to buy .brand or not, are still going to have to protect their trademarks on the left side of the dot.”
Former ICANN chairman Peter Dengate Thrush voted through the change in policy in June. He now serves as executive chairman of Top Level Domain Holdings – a firm which will directly profit from the switch.