ICANN See A Big Change Coming

.com is set to get some .competition, as the net’s governing body over names approved a plan Monday to radically expand the number of possible endings for web addresses.

Starting as early as November 2013, internet users will be able to visit sites with extensions such as .restaurant, .newyorkcity or .microsoft. As with .com, .org and the new popular .co, the dot will need to be preceded by a domain — such as timstacos.restaurant or xbox.microsoft.

That's a Pretty Big Deal.  It opens up a lot of change, and there seems to be little opposition except from traditionalists who hate to see .com lose its place as the default.  The article goes on to explain how the naming protocols are made, and if you've ever wondered who makes those decisions it's worth checking out.

Other possibilities include top-level domains for cities and regions so that restaurants like Mom’s Café can be momscafe.seattle and possibly other TLDs for businesses such as .bank, which could be controlled to keep scammers from ever registering a fake site.

And with one fell stroke, so many spoofing scams and Nigerian bank runs could be ended.  It's not all up to ICANN, however.  The public decides what grows and what dies on the Internet.  I think it's all great, but I'll be bonthegeek.com for years to come.