0 Internet goes beyond .com with new names

The internet's global co-ordinator voted on Monday to allow the creation of website addresses ending in company names, enabling big firms to replace ".com" with their own brand.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) voted overwhelmingly in favour of the radical proposal at a meeting in Singapore despite fears that opening up new website suffixes could cause some confusion.

"This is the biggest change to domain names since the creation of .com 26 years ago," said Theo Hnarakis, chief executive of Melbourne IT Digital Brand Services, a California-based company that provides online branding advice.
Under the changes, businesses will no longer be restricted to the list of generic top level domains (gTLDs) that include .com, .net and .org when they apply to register a website address.
Industry observers say global giants such as Apple, Toyota and BMW, to cite examples from various regions, could be in the vanguard of launching websites with their own domain names ending in .apple, .toyota and .bmw.