ICANN Will Offer New Internet Domains Next Year

Next year, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will open up its list of generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) to applications from anybody with the $185,000 evaluation fee.
Would-be gTLD owners have a bit of time to put on their thinking caps—the application period runs from January 12 to April 12, 2012, after which time ICANN will publish all the domains that were requested and people can raise objections to any of them.


That process could take some time, and who knows which words or strings of words will make the final cut. But it's likely there will be a whole lot of new gTLDs added to the current list of 22, which includes such stalwarts as .com, .org, and .net.

With that in mind, PCMag is trying to figure out which likely gTLD entries will prove to be the most prized. We welcome your additional input in comments. Here's a first take on a potential list of gTLD heavy hitters:

.sex

Yes, it's almost too easy. Plus ICANN has already approved a generic .XXX domain. But this is the Internet, where sex sells well enough for at least a dozen gTLDs that really hit below the belt. Of course, .porn and .bootycall probably won't make the final list.

.games, .music, .movies

You have to figure that these will get snapped up. You just wonder if an Amazon, an Apple, or a Netflix would ever jump on the bandwagon for a given content-specific gTLD.

.apps

There is somebody in Apple's legal department with a pre-prepared objection to this gTLD loaded up in email, their cursor hovering over the "Send" button.

.buy, .sell

Without a doubt, somebody (or a lot of somebodies) are going to try to register these two. But when you think about it, they're really confusing. For example, do you go to a website in the .buy domain to buy stuff or is the site the one that's buying from you?

.stocks

Seems like a good fit for any brokerage house below the very top tier.

.kids

This one could solve a lot of problems for parents. Just set the browser on the rugrats' computer so it can only access .kid websites.

.everything, .images, .videos, .news, .shopping, .books, .places, .blogs, .realtime, .discussions, .recipes, .patents

What do these gTLDs have in common? They're all featured search platforms on Google.

.travel, .health, .fashion

More commonly searched information categories.

.cloud

Now that Apple's launched iCloud, people are probably going to start thinking this nebulous category is cool.

.love

Aww. Guarantees a lot of hits on Valentine's Day, and you gain in the eHarmony demographic where you lose out with the AdultFriendFinder crowd.