With many domains popping up here and there, ever wonder how many domain names there could be by the year 2020? At time of writing, Domain Tool’s statistic website Whois Source, shows that there are more than 145 million top-level domains across the .COM, .NET, .ORG, .INFO, .BIZ, and .US in the world, including more than 139,000 new domains.
Early this year, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced that hundreds of new Internet suffixes will be introduced within the year. Individuals and companies have petitioned ICANN to provide new Web address suffixes since the ‘.com’ address has been exhausted. This announcement will bring the biggest major growth of Web addresses since the 1980s. According to ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade, trademark holders and businesses have the option to protect certain names for a fee. There are roughly 2,000 organizations which submitted 1,400 new suffix addresses in 2012. The Associated Press expects that 20 new suffixes will be created every week.
An article in the Business2Community website predicted that by 2020, there would be 100,000 gTLDs used all over the world. This scenario would happen should ICANN open its 10th window for gTLD applications. Businesses would harness the powers of gTLD to influence the markets using an identifiable name brand on the Web.
The unlimited gTLD platform would give a tool for national and global brands a platform for fair play. They can harness this opportunity to create the right name as Internet address suffix, giving branding a totally different landscape among businesses. By 2020, the Internet would have matured and the corporate world would be learning the following lessons: the power of names, the indexing of names which sometimes direct users to a brand’s competitors, the dilution of names and how it creates problems on aftermarket trademark, and the need for name identity domination.
Having a free rein to choose a domain name suffix has its advantages and disadvantages.
Benefits
• Many available domain names may become less expensive compared to how much it is today. It is the Economic Law of Supply and Demand. If there are many available domain names, and there are much demand for it, the price would theoretically come down.
• People can more easily purchase a domain name they want.
• People would be able to select a more topic specific URL for their website which helps improve URL description.
Drawbacks
• Massive variation in domain name suffixes could get people confused. You may have difficulty remembering the correct URL of a blog or a company site.
• Cases of spamming and potential fraud will increase since it would be easier to direct users to a fake website and get sensitive information from them.
• It is said that to apply for a domain name suffix costs over £100,000 ($150,250), a very costly process. Internet giants would be likely to purchase all domain names relevant to their company before anyone does. Despite the additional suffixes, the choice for ordinary people may still be small.
