News Clip
June 26, 2008, Computerworld

ICANN votes to expand top-level domain names

ICANN also unanimously approved a fast-track process to create a limited number of internationalized domain names that would allow addresses to be written in languages using a non-Latin script, such as Cyrillic, Arabic or Chinese.

"That fast track for country domains really gives me a lot of concern," said Steve DelBianco, executive director of NetChoice, a coalition of trade associations, e-commerce businesses and online consumers. "If the fast track is only for country domains, then ICANN puts today's global domains, .com, .org and .net, on a slow track when it comes to reaching users in different alphabets."

For example, DelBianco said Arabic users will have to choose among 20 different variations of Google because there would be one for each of the 20 countries that would launch Arabic versions of their country domains. But it would be much easier for users to simply enter google.com entirely in Arabic.

"That's the global brand, google.com, so why can't it just be google.com in Arabic?" DelBianco asked. He said the change could also create confusion for users, who simply want to reach their native alphabet version of a domain, such as google.com.

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