There are over 141 million generic TLDs (Top Level Domains) currently registered according to Whois.
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The group, which is calling itself the International Association of Top Level Domains (IATLD), has 12 members including .
We like the timing with an era of new top level domains driven by entrepreneurs getting underway in 2011-13 under the guidance of regulator ICANN.
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Donuts has applied for 307 such top level domains.
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Icann's involvement with Iana was crucial for the body's plan to open up the net with the introduction of many more top level domains that will sit alongside .com, .org and .info.
Organisations that look after the top level domains such as .uk and .de are asking Icann to give guarantees about root server stability, given that billions of dollars of e-commerce now depend on the safe running of these key servers.
This report prepared with the European Registry for Internet Domains (EURid), reviews the uptake of IDN registrations since they first became available as Top Level Domains in 2009, and highlights the challenges posed, notably, by the slow growth of local language use on the Internet.
The six groups are: organizations that register country-code top level domains (such as .de, .uk or .jp, ), those that register generic top level domains (such as .com, .org and .net), commercial and business entities, intellectual property interests, Internet service providers and other providers of Internet connectivity, and registrars (the companies that register the names under which individuals or corporations wish to be known on the Web, such as www.greeneurope.org or www.ibm.com.).
The new generic domains will actually be easier to patrol than .com and other existing top-level domains, said Mason Cole, a Donuts spokesman.
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Other members of this set of generic top-level domains include .edu, .mil, .gov, and .org.
However, not everyone is as optimistic about the potential impact of the new generic top-level domains.
It implies that top-level domains (after the dot) and second-level names (left of the dot) are the same.
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Top-level domains are the air-traffic controllers of the Internet, routing requests for web sites to the proper numerical server address.
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For instance, it suggests adding five new top-level domains, and wants competition between registrars regulated by a private, non-profit corporation.
But so far, only a handful of registrars offer the means to register names up to 63 characters plus top-level domains.
In addition, country code top-level domains such as .ky for Cayman Islands and .be for Belgium fill out the roster.
In the short term, the best use of new top-level domains for e-commerce brands will be for marketing purposes, specifically in advertising.
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One could look to several existing top-level domains as an example: .
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Applications for new top-level domains will be accepted starting January 12, 2012.
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In addition, country code top-level domains such as .ky for Cayman Islands and .be for Belgium filled out the roster.
Both services take advantage of SnapNames' comprehensive searching capability that shows all the available top-level domains and multilingual variants of a particular name.
Plaid Cymru are supporting the application by Nominet to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), for the two top-level domains.
The .eu domain ranks among the largest top-level domains in the world, connecting 500 million people in 27 EU countries to one Internet identity.
The authority has filed an official objection to the move with Icann - the organisation overseeing the rollout of hundreds of new generic top-level domains (gTLD).
New top-level domains would greatly expand the number of possible website addresses around the world, but getting the world to agree on common terms, trademarks and topics is a complicated undertaking.
Icann (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is creating hundreds of other top-level domains as part of a separate expansion set to create addresses ending in .home, .shop and .play.
Even Western governments, which usually favour the multi-stakeholder system, would like to rein in the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), whose board decides which top-level domains to add (such as .com or .biz).
Dr Willie Black, chairman of the organisation that represents European top-level domains and managing director of Nominet, said fear of a lawsuit was preventing Icann from signing a contract to provide a given level of service.
For instance, in spite of its commitment to competition, the plan would create, at least for a transitional period, new exclusive Internet registries: each of the new top-level domains would be controlled by just one company.
Aside from the obvious reason that the 22 existing top-level domains had been well picked over by then, this move was likely motivated, at least in part, by the seductive idea of making something out of nothing.
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