ICANN votes for big change to web addresses

Get ready for .whatever.

The group that oversees Inteet domain names has voted to uncork the bottle on  Web addresses, sparking the biggest change to the Inteet in nearly 30 years.

\"This is the start of a whole new phase for the Inteet,\" said Peter Dengate Thrush, chairman of ICANN's board of directors. \"We have provided a platform for the next generation of creativity and inspiration.\"

For years URLs have been limited to a select few suffixes, including the classic .com or .net. And while several others have been added over the years, such as .xxx, .tv and .info, they have been kept short and uniform.

Not anymore.

\"[This change] will allow corporations to better take control of their brands,\" said Theo Hnarakis, chief executive of Melboue IT, which manages online brands for clients such as Volvo, LEGO and GlaxoSmithKline. \"For example, . Apple or .iPad would take customers right to those products.\"

ICANN has debated the issue of  the domain name suffix for years, but opening the floodgates to allow for more varied ones has proven difficult.

\"We were expecting it to happen some time in 2009,\" Antony van Couvering, CEO of Top Level Domain Holdings Ltd., told Reuters.

Endless discussions with different govements, agencies and companies around the world led to seemingly endless roadblocks, ICANN officials said.

For those hoping to get their own domain suffix, be waed, it won't be easy.

The fee to apply for one is $185,000, and the rulebook is 360 pages. The intentionally difficult process is deliberately designed to weed out scammers hoping to grab valuable domain names.

\"It's a significant undertaking. We're calling it the Olympic bid,\" said Adrian Kinderis, chief executive of AusRegistry Inteational, which helps companies register domains, and manages names such as \".au\" for Australia.

ICANN will begin accepting applications for new domains for 90 days beginning Jan. 12, 2012.