Well ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), is the overseer for setting a standard of organization for domain naming (among a few other things).

In other words, companies can buy up a .com or .ca of their address, educational institutions snap up the .edu addresses, and non-profit (and other) organizations pick up the .org address. You can also organize your webpresence based on geographic location. Japanese sites can use the .jp domain extension, .ca for Canada, etc.

Yesterday ICANN announced that in its current proposal due for vote in early 2009 is to drop any domain extension restrictions.

Well….crap!

Currently the enjoyable and painless part of the internet is being able to nearly-find the company / product you’re looking for by hopping onto a browser and typing in .com or .ca (or whatever). 95% of the time, I hit the site I want right away.

Besides the obvious real-estate cash grab by ICANN, the new proposal just makes it THAT much harder for potential customers to find you and/or you to find the sites you expect to be there.

Most companies will probably have to snap up and register some permutations of their company just to preserve their identity / brand.

The CBC (www.cbc.ca) could need to register:

- cbc.news.ca
- www.cbc.news
- www.cbc
- www.cbc.sucks
- communist.broadcast.centre

You get the idea