The internet is in a process of updating itself. ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is the non-profit organization that is responsible for overseeing the growth of the internet. Its primary mission is to make sure that every domain has a unique identifier or URL, and that each domain has a unique IP address. The organisation was under the influence of the US government but considering the importance of the internet, it is now shifting to model where it will be answerable to multiple stakeholders and not just the US government. The CEO of ICANN recently said that India’s role is central in the conversation about the future of the [...]
Google, today, added one more domain to its list of top-level domains (TLDs). The internet search giant paid a hefty sum of $25 million to procure a whole web domain.
As per Business Insider, Google made the highest bid of $25 million for .app, a top-level domain. Following this, ICANN, an organisation that holds a control over world’s domain names, declared Google as the winner of the domain. Google applied for .docs, .android, .free, .fyi, .foo, and .app; only managing to acquire the last one. The company presently owns four more web domains namely .soy, .minna, .foo and .how.
Google’s dream of owning a top level dotless search domain has turned into a nightmare. The gigantic search engine wanted ownership of an “http://search” dotless domain. But this has come up against the stringent restrictions of ICANN.
A dotless top level domain name would resolve without a dot. For example, while something.example will resolve in most browsers, http://example will not.
Google had hoped to use “search” as a dotless domain name. But recent security reports reconfirmed some of the security and stability risks of dotless domains.
