--- title: Fundamental change to Internet description: ICANN the worlds Internet Governance organisation has agreed to introduce new domain names GTLD's that anyone can apply for the creation of url: https://www.taiuru.co.nz/fundamental-change-to-internet/ markdown_url: https://www.taiuru.co.nz/fundamental-change-to-internet.md type: post slug: fundamental-change-to-internet author: Karaitiana Taiuru published: 2008-07-08T22:39:00Z modified: 2024-12-25T01:27:00Z language: en-NZ taxonomies: category: - Domain Names word_count: 297 tokens: 476 --- # Fundamental change to Internet At the ICANN meeting in Paris, ICANN agreed to the most fundamentally largest change on the Internet since its inception over 40 years ago. ICANN in 2009 will accept the creation of new gTLD’s. The decision has created a lot of debate and speculation that large corporations will simply use their money and power to essentially further their branding by having their own gTLD’s such as .google (Sergio@google) and .microsoft (bill@microsoft) . In the first instance these appear to be incomplete addresses, but they will be a reality next year. The technical community are deep in debate and discussions regarding the technical issues in browsers and emtail clients as well as some minor issues such as email form validation tools. But such issues are not new. It was only a few years ago when ICANN decided that TLD’s could be more than 3 characters long http://www.icann.org/topics/TLD-acceptance/. ICANN are extremely cautious when it comes to new developments and changes. While conglomerates may see gTLDs as a branding exercise, cultural based groups around the world now have an opportunity to be represented on the Internet regardless of their countries majority rule or impacts of colonialisation. Alongside the many European cultures i have discussed in this blog who have been trying to establish their own gTLD for better representation there are the Asian peoples who can not even use their ‘mother tongue” to access their own country and associated web sites on the Internet. Moreover there are a myriad of indigenous peoples who also lack and need suitable representation. Considering many indigenous groups will probably not be in a position to pay the US$100k application fee (and assuming the proposed policy is not too stringent) i believe we may see a new gTLD established for all indigenous people, with 2LD’s identifying various groups.