Canon May Be First Company Ever to Acquire Its Own Top-Level Domain Name

On Wednesday, March 17th, Canon released its decision to work towards acquiring its own top-level domain name, .canon. This was made possible through ICANN's (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) decision to open up the number of top-level domains. No longer will every company have a web address ending in .com, but specified domain names will soon be available for anyone willing to buy one, making it much easier for companies who share a name to distinguish themselves from each other. For instance, if there are independent Italian restaurants with the name "Guido's" in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, they will soon each be able to have their own website, differentiating each restaurant. There will no longer be any confusion about which restaurant is being promoted by guidos.com, since the domain name .guidos could be purchased and used by each of these restaurants (i.e. guidos.losangeles, guidos.newyork and guidos.chicago).

The decision to expand the number of top-level domains was made by ICANN to encourage competition between companies online and to help small businesses promote themselves with creative website names. ICANN is a "not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. It promotes competition and develops policy on the Internet’s unique identifiers" [1]. Obviously, one of ICANN's primary responsibilities is to ensure the interoperability of the internet, partly by organizing the identification of unique websites and domain names. The shift to unique top-level domain names will completely revolutionize e-commerce, making it much easier for consumers to connect with specific companies without any confusion. This will allow small businesses to enter competition with greater success and more widespread promotion, because they will literally be able to advertise their website by merely promoting the name of the company. Connecting to a company's website will be as simple as typing the company name into the web browser URL bar (i.e. typing "google" for google.com or "loyola" for loyola.edu).

There are thousands of domain name search engines in existence right now (for example, NetworkSolutions.com [2], instantdomainsearch.com [3], and whois.net [4], to name a few), but this top-level domain name revolution being brought about by ICANN will totally change the demand for domain name search engines. Most likely, many of them will go out of business as companies realize how easy it is to invent a unique domain name, using their own top-level domain name. As stated previously, connecting with customers will completely change as well as finding specific companies will be as easy as typing the company name into the URL bar, eliminating the need for customers to memorize url addresses.

This revolution will even touch independent consultants, freelance writers and photographers, musicians and other businessmen or artists who wish to promote themselves. Anyone in these categories will now be able to purchase their own domain name, like johndoe.freelancewriter or joeschmoe.independentauditor. Independent businessmen should be thrilled at the change that this decision by ICANN will bring for them. Because of the great freedom brought about by this decision, however, companies need to prepare to purchase their own domain name now to avoid a fraudulent website under the company's name being created. Overall, this decision to open up freedom with top-level domain names will revolutionize the way e-commerce is done.

See the article:

Singel, Ryan. "Canon First in Line for Its Own Top-Level Domain, .canon | Epicenter | Wired.com." Wired News. 17 Mar. 2010. Web. 19 Mar. 2010. <http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/03/canon-domain/>.

Sources:
[1]. "ICANN | About." ICANN - Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Web. 18 Mar. 2010.

[2]. Domain Names, Web Hosting and Online Marketing Services | Network Solutions. Web. 18 Mar. 2010.

[3]. Domain Name Search. Web. 18 Mar. 2010.

[4]. Whois.net - Domain Names. Web. 18 Mar. 2010.