World Wide Domains: ICANN Reveals Applications for Domains Like .LOL, .PIZZA, and .SEXY

Call it a milestone or a non-event, but the latest news involving ICANN is something worth talking about. The company has announced that it has received close to 2,000 applications for new top-level domain names, which means firms can now create sites on URLs ending in virtually ".whatever." The application period was opened last January 12th and closed on May 30th.

This is going to be a big and noticeable change for sure, considering that thousands of new extensions will be deployed when the applications finally get approved. There are currently only 22 TLDs that are being used today, ranging from the usual .COM, to the .NET, .ORG, and .EDU.

Imagine the likes of .LOL, .PIZZA, and .SEXY joining the ranks of these traditional domain extensions and you've got yourself a worldwide domain party. With June 13th dubbed as "Reveal Day," ICANN posted the full list of TLDs that firms, organizations, and companies from all over the world have paid for.

ICANN developed the New generic Top-Level Domain Program to increase competition and choice by introducing new gTLDs into the Internet's addressing system. A gTLD is an Internet domain name extension such as the familiar .com, .net, or .org. There are 280 ccTLDs but only 22 "generics" in the domain name system right now, but that is all about to change.

-- ICANN "Reveal Day" announcement

Anyone who might have objections to any TLDs in the list have seven months to contact ICANN and file a case about their complaints. For extensions that have several applicants trying to get it, ICANN will be going through them in a multi-stage process to decide who gets what. ICANN plans to deploy these new domain extensions sometime in 2013 in batches of 500.

Notable TLDs in the list include .LOL, .SEXY, .PIZZA, .BARCLAYS, .RIP, and even .SUCKS. Others include .LOVE, .POKER, .BEER, and .RIP.