ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) will draw 1900 new sponsored top level domains (TLDs) in a “prioritisation draw”, Tuesday Australian time.
Successful bidders will be chosen through a lottery draw – which means for the first time we’ll have some foresight on what kind of names we can expect to hit the web from mid next year, when the sponsored TLDs will join the existing generic URL suffixes like .com and .org.
Australian TLDs in the mix include the AFL (.afl), Victorian and NSW governments (.melbourne and .sydney), three of the big four banks ANZ, NAB and CBA, Australia Post, iiNet, Telstra, Tabcorp and Channel Seven. Global brands include Google, McDonalds and Apple. The draw will take 7 hours and starts at 8:00 am AEDT Tuesday 18 December. Read More