ICANN reveal of new TLDs shows plan to introduce .sucks and over 1,000 others

This morning ICANN revealed a list of newly purchased top-level domains (TLDs) that are certain to change a great deal about the face of the Internet. Common TLDs, like .com, .net, and .org have become crowded, and ICANN decided to sell new ones with an application fee of $185,000. Nearly 2,000 applications were received.

Many were purchased by businesses such as .abc, .bing, .nokia, and .polo, seeking to protect their name before someone else has a chance to get to it. Quite foreseeably, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft each purchased a large number of TLDs for their products.

More generic TLDs like .news, .music, .pizza, .vodka were also purchased - mostly by holding companies, likely creating a huge market for domain names in the near future. Perhaps the most interesting was .sucks, which will undoubtedly have many fun applications in the future (perhaps I should plan to register jeffreybrown.sucks?).

The problem with new TLDs, as I've discussed before (here), is that organizations are essentially forced to buy up domain names (and now entire TLDs) in order to protect their images. When the .xxx TLD was launched, companies and universities bought up domains like "www.hoosiers.xxx" to prevent improper use. Many opposed ICANN's plan (including several in Congress).

Click here for the full list.