New Top-level Domain Names

The U.S. Department of Commerce will implement the new names, based on recommendations from ICANN. The winners of the selection process were culled from forty-four registry companies who presented their cases to the organization. The new domain names reflect three broad categories of content: general purpose (.biz, .info); personal (.name); and restricted use by community (.aero, .coop, .museum, .pro). More domain names were deemed necessary to provide organizations and individuals with a larger body of concise and descriptive name options, reducing competition for names in the existing domains. ICANN, which stands for "Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers," is an organization of members whose backgrounds include business, academia, and technology. The body is responsible for maintaining the system of addresses that keeps each address globally unique, thus enabling the Internet to function.

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