New Top-Level Domains
Provide Choice While Adding
Accountability and Order

Curious about the new top-level domain extensions — .biz, .info and .name?

Until recently, newcomers to the Web have had to either purchase their names from a reseller, spend precious time and resources marketing Web addresses that bear no resemblance to their name, or adopt a troublesome punctuation mark, unconventional spelling or abbreviation to retain some semblance of their name in their Web address.

That's because with more than 143 million Americans using the Web, the odds of different people laying claim to the same name are pretty good. (Tried getting a really clever e-mail address lately? Seems that everything clever has been taken.) The Internet requires that no two Web addresses be the same. Consequently, when two or more people have legitimate claim to a name, the first one to register it often gets ownership.

A Second Chance

But now, recent arrivals to the Web and other dotcom shutouts have a second chance at getting that Web address that bears their name. The opportunity comes from a decision in November 2000 by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to add seven new top-level domains (TLDs) — .aero, .biz, .coop, .info, .museum, .name, and .pro — to the Internet's domain name system. Three of the seven — .biz, .info and .name — are operational and accepting registrations. Dotinfo is the first unrestricted top-level domain since .com.

Computers use a complicated string of numbers, or IP addresses, to find their way around the Internet. The domain name system makes it easier for people to remember those Web addresses by allowing users to employ mnemonic devices, such as words and familiar strings of letters, instead of numbers.

Take my company's new dotbiz address — www.cgroupllc.biz, for instance. It's shorter than our Geocities address — www.geocities.com/cgroupbiz/ — and easier to remember. It simply uses the company name with a .biz extension.