The internet domain name administrative body ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is planning what I consider to be one of the bigger events on the web in quite some time. Based on the premise that the world is running out of available names for websites, in 2010, they are planning to open up domain names extensions to just about anything under the sun. Next year, you could very well see the beginning of websites being named such oddities as Coca.Cola or DonaldTrump.Toupee. This may be a little bit of an exaggeration but not by much. I think Robert Mitchell at PCWorld describes it creatively saying "Top level domains could soon be as common as vanity license plates." With these coming changes to domain names, fat fingering may take on a whole new meaning. Watch out what you type into your browser bar! You name it, it will be an extension at some point. I am sure some some hair-brained "entrepreneur" with dreams of riches will start buying every conceivable domain name like with the word Obama in it (that may be pretty smart actually). The famous whitehouse.com (my advice - DO NOT type whitehouse.com into your browser) versus whitehouse.gov website confusion will become ancient history.
It doesn't seem hard to figure out who really benefits from this. Search, search, search. Google, Google, Google. Search (and by extension and its sheer dominance, Google) is a behavior heavily engrained in our web pysche in 2009. It seems impossible to think that this could be entrenched even further than it already is. With the creature comfort of using ".com" gone and the heightened fear of punching something very very wrong in your browser address bar, search engines are sure to become the absolute first place to start any session on the web. Web navigation through search emerged as somewhat of an unexpected browsing behavior in the early days of Google. The question was often asked for instance, "Why would someone go to Google to type in "CNN.com?" With their lightning fast response times, Google made it very easy to use them as a proxy for actually typing an address out. If the user's mind then becomes overwhelmed with uncertainty and the question then becomes "is it CNN.com or is it CNN.News or CNN.Headlines....", search becomes anchored permanently as the first step in any web session and this makes the folks in Mountain View, CA smile.
