News has it that in the very near future, organisations will be able to purchase personalised top-level domain names such as .bank, .wine, .school, .microsoft, etc.

Currently all web addresses fall under one of a set number of top-level domain names. There are 240 .country or .territory domains, and some 20 generic ones, from .com, .net and .org to .gov, .edu or .aero.

Under the new system, the web's 1.3 billion users would be able from early 2009 to buy an unlimited number of generic addresses based on common words, brands, company names, cities and proper names, according to ICANN.

To avoid chaos, Damilaville said the ICANN also adopted a motion designed to "limit the abusive registration of new domain names".

None of the new names is likely to dethrone ".com" as the world's leader, and critics fear new suffixes will merely force companies and organisations to spend more money registering names such as "microsoft.paris" simply so others can't.

With the stock of available web addresses under the current IPv4 protocol set to run out by 2011, ICANN has been under pressure to find a solution for burgeoning demand.

The online trading site eBay is one of the many companies that wants to have its own domain name.

Broad product groups such as .bank or .car are also likely contenders.

Source: Rule changes to spark domain name goldrush

Although there are many benefits of the new system, and organisations will be rushing to secure broad categories and products such as .fashion, .car, .technology, I think it is a little ridiculous for normal internet users to spend $US100,000 just to obtain a personalised top-level domain name.

[tags]domain, domain name, icann, top-level domain names [/tags]