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Businesses that haven't given much thought lately to their domain names may have reason to take another look at them starting next spring. If all goes according to schedule, that's when the long approval process will begin for new top-level domains to challenge the dominance of .com.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the not-for-profit organization charged with handling domain-name issues, wants to remove the current limits on generic top-level domains (gTLDs). These gTLDs are the ones with three or more letters, to distinguish them from the two-letter domains assigned to each country. There are currently 21, seven of which are available for general use. ICANN has been planning to open the gTLD gates since 2007, but lately the tide of official documents and meetings has increased as it prepares for a proposed launch of the new approval process in spring 2010
When the Internet first went commercial in the mid-1990s, there were three gTLDs for businesses to worry about: .com, .org, and .net. (Several others, like .edu, .gov, and .mil, had restricted uses.) Originally, .org and .net were supposed to be for not-for-profit organizations and network providers respectively, but as the .com land grab got completely out of hand, domain-name registrars opened them up to businesses as well. Seven new gTLDs approved in 2000 didn't help matters, with choices like .info and .biz that didn't have any clear function separate from .com. And the addition of several restricted-purpose gTLDs in 2005 went virtually unnoticed (and unused) in most commercial circles, with the possible exception of .mobi (sites designed for mobile phone display).
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