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Domain Name Changes


Last week domain-name overseer ICANN announced that sometime next year it will allow domain names that are not in the Latin alphabet. The first non-Latin domain names are expected to be in Chinese and Arabic.  It’s an inevitable  and perhaps overdue milestone in the Internet’s evolution into a global platform.

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This was written by David Randall. Posted on Wednesday, November 4, 2009, at 6:04 am. Filed under Internet Culture. Tagged . Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback.

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5 Comments

  1. Joe Halloran wrote:

    Let the foreign domain squatting begin….may need a translator.

    Wednesday, November 4, 2009 at 5:38 pm | Permalink
  2. Steffan Antonas wrote:

    This is surely overdue and definitely will be a huge milestone. Any thoughts on why it hasn't happened already?

    Thursday, November 5, 2009 at 4:15 pm | Permalink
  3. Shadi Ashouri wrote:

    International Domain Names have been going on for quite a while, I think since 2001, However, since then they havent innovated a foreign .com. SO for example, it would be xxxx(mandarin).com. However, in the future all the characters, including the .com, will be in a foreign language. I was told by a major IDN'er that ICANN will be offering the all foreign character websites to the people that own the (foreign language).com of them.

    Monday, November 16, 2009 at 5:25 am | Permalink
  4. Brian Chin wrote:

    This is a good change because “more than half of the 1.6 billion people who use the Internet speak languages with non-Latin scripts.” It’s about time that people will be able to use the Internet in their own language. This will make it more convenient for the older generation to at least try to attempt to use the Internet.

    Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 8:45 pm | Permalink
  5. christellekaram wrote:

    what if an american wanted to access a foreign website (domain name), say for example, in arabic. wouldn't the letters of the website have to be in arabic, and therefore the american is bound to have an "arabic" option on the keyboard? would they have to create a software that provided all international characters? or go through the costs and hassle of producing international keywords? there may be an easier way out there that resolves this issue that is unknown to me, interested to know if so. just a thought :)

    Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 11:29 pm | Permalink

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