"Tired of .com? Now move to .lol!"

Domain names will no longer just be .com or .org: Reuters

Several big companies like Google, YouTube and even Indian companies like Tata are gearing up to take advantage of a new program to expand web suffixes (such as .com or .org), by ending web addresses with their own company names. (Such as for example, innovation.tata or viralvideos.youtube)

The Business Standard reported that The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the nonprofit organization that manages the Internet’s address system, has received 28 applications from 15 Indian corporate houses.

Vint Cerf, Google’s chief Internet evangelist, confirmed that Google had applied for its company name as a suffix, along with other suffixes such as .lol and .docs. Cerf said that the .youtube domain could make it easier to identify channels and genres while the .lol domain, (laugh out loud) had interesting and creative potential.

“We’re just beginning to explore this potential source of innovation on the Web,” Cerf said. “By opening up more choices for Internet domain names, we hope people will find options for more diverse – and perhaps shorter – signposts in cyberspace.”

In India, a Tata Sons spokesman told the Business Standard,

“We believe it can help increase global brand visibility, enhancement of both internal and external communication, as “.tata” can become the focal point of the Tata Group’s internet presence for both internal and external users and it provides us with complete control over second-level registration and use.” Officials from the State Bank of India said they had applied for the .sbi and .statebank domain names.

The newspaper added that other Indian companies such as Reliance and Mahindra & Mahindra were also understood to have applied for the domain.

However not all companies are excited by the prospect. The programme is opposed by more than 40 companies including General Electric and Coca-Cola that say it will increase their costs, confuse consumers, and spark Internet fraud.

ICANN, which has said the expansion could result in thousands of new Web suffixes, plans to publish the list of applied-for domains on 13 June. It has received over 2000 applications so far. At present, there are about 22 top-level domain (TLD) names, which include .com, .org, .net, and .org and over 200 country-based domain names like .in (India), .us, .uk and so on.

The Federal Trade Commission said in December that the plan may increase opportunities for Internet fraud and called on ICANN to reduce the number of domains created.

Google will attempt to rank new top-level domains “appropriately,” Matt Cutts, a principal engineer who heads the company’s Web spam team, said in a March 14 post on the Google+ social-networking service.